
M.KING 






Class 
Book 
CopyrightN^ 






Ks 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSrr. 




THE " MOABITE STONE." — About B. C. 890. 
(Paris, Museum of th.e Louvre.) 

Monument dedicated to the ?od Kemi^sh. by Mesha, king of Afoab, to record his vic- 
tory over the Israelites in the days of Ahab ; found at Dibhan in the land of Moab in 
1868. The inscription is in the Phoenician character. 



Why We Believe 
« ^ ^ The Bible 



By HENRY MELVILLE KING 

Author of ** Our Gospels," 
and'^TvLY. Messiah in the Psalms.'* 



^ 



NEW YORK: AMERICAN 
TRACT SOCIETY « « « « 

ISO NASSAU STREET 



.K5- 



THE LiSPARY 

Two CC'Plt.s RsCfiVED 
/jCnpvaiOHT FAiTBY 

cVaSB CL xXo. No. 



Copyright, 1902 
By American Tract Society 



* 1 



• • t 



1^ 

t 

^ a 

X 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface, 5 

CHAPTER 

I. The Light erom the Monu- 
ments, . II 

11. The Voice oe History, ... 59 

III. The Witness oe the Bible 

Itsele, 8y 

VI. The Prooe erom Miracles, . .123 

V. The Testimony erom Christian 

Experience, 161 

VI. The Evidence erom the Tri- 
umphs oe Christianity, . . 193 

Index^ 225 



PREFACE 

The method of approach often determines 
the results of investigation. Mental attitude 
has much to do with the weight of evidence. 
Few men are absolutely unbiased. The au- 
thor frankly confesses that to be compelled to 
give up faith in the Bible as the authoritative 
Word of God would be to him an unspeakably 
distressing calamity. It is the only Book we 
have that gives to us any satisfying informa- 
tion about God, duty, salvation, and immortal- 
ity. Every instinct of his soul leads to the de- 
sire that the historicity of the Bible may be 
more and more established, that its trustworthi- 
ness may be confirmed, that its inspiration and 
divine origin may be clearly demonstrated, and 
that its integrity and authority may be unim- 
paired. These characteristics render the Bible 
truly the Word of God. 

Faith must have its justification. The peace 
of credulity cannot long be preserved. Yet the 
claims of the Bible, its marvellous character 



6 WHY w^ BELIEVE fA^ BIBLE 

and influence, its prestige, ought to predispose 
the mind to faith, to protect the Bible against 
hasty and destructive criticism, and to secure 
for it the most reverent and careful treatment. 
The evidences in support of its claims ought to 
receive the fullest consideration. Adverse crit- 
icisms should be carefully scrutinized. To ig- 
nore the evidences and welcome the criticisms 
would be proof of an unfriendly and unright- 
eous spirit. Reconstruction may be sometimes 
necessary. It is liable to be rash, and is always 
attended with danger. To tear down the old 
house, tmder the pretence of building a new 
one with selected m.aterial, may be to leave the 
soul without shelter. He who rashly under- 
mines faith in any part of revelation may be de- 
stro3dng faith in all revelation. The same 
hand rarely has sufficient skill to be destructive 
and constructive at the same time. The popu- 
lar judgment may sometimes err, but it is gen- 
erally correct when it discriminates between 
the friends and the enemies of the Bible. 

Apologetics has its place in Christian litera- 
ture. Controversy may be unprofitable. De- 
fence may be necessary. Assaults upon the 
Bible have always disclosed the strength of its 



PREFACE 7 

defences. Its defenders have been a noble 
army, from Origen until now, and have ren- 
dered a service for the truth of inestimable value. 
Faith in the ultimate triumph of the Word of 
God is not inconsistent with a prompting to 
point out its unique characteristics and its con- 
vincing confirmations, and to proclaim its mar- 
vellous achievements among many nations. 
Such efforts on the part of the friends of the 
Bible serve to check the tide of unbelief and 
strengthen the faith of the timid. 

At the present time the Holy Scriptures are 
exposed to varied hostile attacks. Even some 
of the friends of the Bible appear to be quite 
ready to surrender the outposts, with the hope, 
if not for the purpose, of saving the citadel. 
New defences for the Bible as a revelation of 
divine truth seem to be demanded, and in the 
wonderful providence of God they have been 
provided. Biblical defences were never so 
abundant and strong as at the beginning of the 
twentieth century. The authority and veracity 
of the Scriptures were never supported by such 
harmonious and convincing testimony as now. 

The century that has just closed has been 
distinguished as much for its missionary prog- 



8 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

ress as for its progress in scientific knowledge 
and human invention, remarkable as that has 
been. The triumphs of the Christian religion 
in all lands are its indisputable and ever ac- 
cumulating credentials. The last century has 
been called pre-eminently the missionary cen- 
tury, not only in point of courageous and far- 
reaching effort, but in point of splendid 
achievement. Moreover, the weight of testi- 
mony in favor of the trustworthiness of the 
Sacred Records, derived in recent years 
from archeology and unearthed history, has 
strengthened incalculably the claim of the 
Bible upon the faith of the scholarship of 
Christendom, and made it possible to treat the 
subject of Christian evidences as never before. 
This testimony bears upon the outward form 
and historic facts of Revelation, and must be 
of very special value to those persons who have 
sought to retain faith in the essential truth of 
Revelation, while feeling compelled to ques- 
tion the accuracy and truthfulness of its 
records. 

The spirit of Christianity inheres in the 
recorded facts and promulgated truths of Chris- 
tianity, and cannot long survive, if they are 



PREFACE 9 

denied. The truths of revealed reUgion are 
contained in a Sacred Book, comprising the 
Old and New Testaments, both of which are 
historic in form and didactic in nature, and 
those truths will continue to influence the lives, 
the hopes and the destinies of men so long as 
reverence for that Book and faith in its records 
are preserved. The letter without the spirit 
kills. The spirit without the letter, which is 
its necessary embodiment and visible expres- 
sion, soon disappears and is gone, like the fra- 
grance of the flower, like the light of the sun, 
when flower and sun are taken away. 

May this small volume be helpful to the faith 
of its readers in the divine origin and trust- 
worthiness of the Holy Scriptures, who have 
not the time or the disposition to make them- 
selves familiar with more elaborate treatises on 
Christian evidences. H. M. K. 

Providence, R. I. 



THE LIGHT FROM THE 
MONUMENTS 



"Let all the nations he gathered together, and 
let the people he assembled: who among them 
can declare this, and show us former things f 
Let them hring forth their witnesses, that they 
may he justiHed; or let them hear, and say, It is 
truth" (Isaiah 43:9.) 



CHAPTER I. 

THE LIGHT ]?ROM THE MONUMENTS. 

The books of the Old Testament are, or pro- 
fess to be, largely historical records. They are 
full of the names of persons, places and events 
of a remote past. Until a very recent date they 
were universally believed to contain accurate 
history, the names of persons who once lived, 
and of places which had an actual existence, 
and the record of events as credible and trust- 
w^orthy as any accepted history recent or re- 
mote. Of course, confirmatory evidence of the 
truthfulness of these Scriptural Records was 
not at hand. The history of God's ancient 
people was interwoven with the history of other 
contemporaneous peoples, who inhabited ad- 
jacent territory, and were frequently engaged 
with it in varied intercourse or in deadly war- 
fare ; but the records of other nations had been 
to such an extent obliterated or lost that little 
comparison could be made and little support 



14 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

could be adduced. Ancient history was for the 
most part Grecian or Roman, and there seemed 
little likelihood that the vanished past of Egypt, 
Chaldea, Babylonia and Assyria would ever be 
brought to light, and made to live again in the 
detailed accounts of substantial history. Arch- 
eology was a study with scanty material and 
few attractions, and was little pursued. 

At that time, a half century or more ago, the 
spirit of a skeptical destructive criticism, some- 
times called "historic," because it assailed the 
facts of history, and not because it had discov- 
ered new historic facts, sprang up and seemed 
to become infectious. Its method was largely 
one of denial. It was bold in its assertions, 
and seemed to be having things pretty much its 
own way, because the proofs of the things 
which it denied, on account of their remoteness 
in the past, seemed to be destroyed or utterly 
and forever inaccessible. 

Classic history was revolutionized, and its 
heroes, its events, and even its famous cities 
were surrounded with an atmosphere of sus- 
picion, or relegated to the region of sagas, 
myths and legends. Herodotus and Berosus, 
from whom modern historians had been wont 



The LIGHT from the MONUMENTS 15 

to derive their material, were declared to be 
little more than romancers, and wholly un- 
worthy of confidence. Nothing was too sacred 
to be assailed by this destructive criticism. It 
turned its attention to the books of the Bible, 
which profess to trace the current of history 
back a thousand years prior to the earliest au- 
thentic history of Greece and Rome, and it 
looked as if Abraham and Isaac and Jacob 
would disappear in the misty haze that envel- 
oped Agamemnon and ancient Troy. Indeed, 
it was boldly asserted that the earlier books of 
the Old Testament were ''the product of a 
mythical and legendary age, and belonged back 
in the fogs and mists of antiquity, before the 
dawn of true and corroborative history." There 
being known no external testimony to the 
reality of its persons and events, and to the ac- 
curacy of its records, beyond the traditional 
faith which had prevailed, it was supposed that 
there was no such testimony in existence. At 
the beginning of the century there had not been 
discovered more than a single document or in- 
scription contemporaneous with the Old Testa- 
ment Scriptures. There were no witnesses 
which could be summoned in support of these 



i6 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

ancient records. Their genuineness and trust- 
worthiness were confidently challenged, and 
their friends were unable to make reply. And 
so the sacred belief of centuries was disputed, 
what purported to be history and had always 
been believed to be history, was declared to be 
fable and imagination, and the old books, it 
was asserted, were compiled of floating tradi- 
tions by a late hand, and palmed off by a 
pious fraud upon the faith of a deluded people. 

Of course, these deniers and dissectors un- 
dertook to advance arguments in favor of their 
views, which in the absence of contradictory 
evidence on the other side were regarded by 
them as conclusive. And, indeed, if the argu- 
ments had been historically true, and no new 
light had been shed upon the Biblical problems, 
the Old Testament Scriptures, which were the 
sacred faith of God's ancient people, which cer- 
tainly seemed to have had the endorsement of 
Christ, and which are the real background, and 
in some true sense the foundation, of New Tes- 
tament Christianity, might have been set aside 
as utterly unworthy of our confidence. 

How much hostility to the supernatural ele- 
ment in the Old Testament may have influ- 



The LIGHT from the MONUMENTS 17 

enced the attitude and conduct of these destruc- 
tive critics, it is not necessary now to consider. 
It is enough to say that in the judgment of 
some men the presence of the supernatural, 
whether in the Old Testament or the New, is 
to be ascribed solely to the mythical spirit, and 
must be eliminated before the records can be 
accepted as substantial and trustworthy his- 
tory. The naturalistic interpretation of the 
origin and growth and substance of religion is 
the only interpretation which the rationalistic 
and falsely called scientific spirit will acknowl- 
edge. God is imprisoned not only in natural 
forces, but in natural forces that are known 
and understood. The supernatural is therefore 
inevitably the unreal and the mythical, and all 
records containing it are prejudged and put 
outside of the bounds of possible history. 

The leaders of the extreme criticism, its orig- 
inators and active propagators, are acknowl- 
edged to be such men as Kuenen, Wellhausen, 
Dillmann, Reuss, Stade and Cornill, all of 
whom are unbelievers in the supernatural. It 
is they who have pronounced the Pentateuch 
"legend, myth, saga, tradition and not trust- 
worthy (nicht glauhwurdig, not worthy of be- 



1 8 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

lief)," and have flooded Christendom with their 
opinions, and "overthrown the faith of some." 
The}^ and their disciples declare that the Priest 
Code, which professes to have been revealed by 
God to Moses, "is nothing but an ideal sketch, 
opposed to patent facts, in the form of history, 
written by a priest a thousand years after 
Moses, . . . and neither founded on archives 
nor given by inspiration." This is the state- 
ment of their position given by Prof. Howard 
Osgood, of the Rochester Theological Semi- 
nary. 

The first argument of the destructive critics 
against the early date and Mosaic authorship 
of the Pentateuch, and therefore the historicity 
of its records, was that then the art of writing 
was unknown among the Hebrew people, and 
that Moses, if there was a Moses, partook of 
the general illiteracy of the time. If this state- 
ment had been true, it would have been, of 
course, the end of all discussion. But recent 
abundant discoveries prove beyond a doubt 
that throughout the East, from the banks of 
the Nile to the Euphrates, learning was widely 
diffused, and the age of Moses and of Abraham 
was an age of intense literary activity. The Tel- 



The LIGHT from the MONUMENTS 19 

el-Amarna tablets, found buried in the sands 
of Egypt, and of a date prior to the birth of 
Moses, inscribed with the cuneiform characters 
of Babylonia and containing the correspond- 
ence of the princes of Syria and of other na- 
tions, which were then subject-territories of 
Egypt, establish the fact that there was, all 
through that region, a written language which 
was the medium of official communication, and 
that there were schools, and libraries, and ar- 
chives for the preservation of records which 
long antedated the period of the Exodus. The 
land of the exile of the children of Israel was 
distinguished for its scribes and its inscriptions. 
Inscriptions have been found upon the walls of 
the temples, the houses, and the tombs, and even 
upon articles of domestic use. It is absolutely 
impossible that Moses, who was "learned in all 
the wisdom of the Egyptians," could have been 
ignorant of an art which was so common. Prof. 
A. H. Sayce says : ''The proof presented by 
archaeology declares not only that Moses could 
have written the Pentateuch, but that it would 
have been something like a miracle if he had 
not done so." He also adds, with reference to 
the educational status of the people, that "Ori- 



20 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

ental archaeology maintains that the Israelites 
must have known how to read and write before 
their settlement in Canaan." Indeed, it is 
abundantly evident that Canaan shared in the 
literary culture which surrounded it in Chaldea 
and in Babylonia as in Egypt, and was also a 
land of schools and libraries. One of its cities 
was named Kirjath-Sepher, which means "a 
city of books," and there is every reason to be- 
lieve that it was only one among many ^'Book- 
towns" in the country. It would be strange in- 
deed if God's chosen people alone had been 
ignorant and unenlightened amid surrounding 
nations. The evidence is overwhelmingly con- 
clusive that Israel shared in the prevailing in- 
telligence, and that the art of writing existed 
there from time immemorial. This old argu- 
ment against the early origin and non-Mosaic 
authorship of the Pentateuch has long since 
been abandoned, disappearing, as the darkness 
of ignorance out of which it grew, before the 
rising of the sun of archaeology. 

A second argument in favor of the various 
authorship and late date of the early books of 
the Bible has been found in the study of the 
language of the books themselves, their varied 



The LIGHT from the MONUMENTS 21 

style, and the introduction and use of words 
which it is asserted could not have made their 
appearance in Hebrew literature until the time 
of the exile or later. This is the linguistic 
argument, and is the special field of what is 
called "the higher criticism," a phrase which is 
a misnomer, and needs to be constantly ex- 
plained lest it convey an utterly false impres- 
sion. 

This linguistic argument is confessedly 
largel}^ conjectural, and being dependent upon 
individual opinion, is perpetually divided 
against itself. At best it must be of uncertain 
value. It is the study of the incomplete litera- 
ture of an imperfectly known language, with 
little or no comparison with authoritative 
standards, and its students might well be sup- 
posed to offer their literary and especially their 
historical conclusions, which are of the nature 
of inferences, with extreme modesty. An un- 
disputed authority has said : "The Hebrew lit- 
erature that has come down to us is but a frag- 
ment of what once existed, and the interpreta- 
tion of a good deal of it is doubtful. Our 
knowledge of the Hebrew language is in the 
highest degree imperfect ; our Hebrew lexicons 



22 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

contain but a fraction of the words once pos- 
sessed by it, and the meaning of many of the 
words which have been preserved, as well as of 
the idioms of the grammar, is merely a matter 
of conjecture." 

And yet the extreme higher critics have 
pushed their literary dissection to the most 
astonishing results. Books, chapters, para- 
graphs, verses, and even phrases have been bi- 
sected and dismembered by this wholesale dis- 
secting process, and ascribed to different authors 
whose names, of course, are unknown — all 
of which parts have been reduced to their pres- 
ent form by some late redactor, also unknown. 
It is not necessary to go into details in describ- 
ing these marvellous conclusions. Genesis, 
about whose composition the critics seem to be 
the nearest agreed, is supposed to be the work 
of not less than seven authors, whose literary 
labors have been stitched together, with more 
or less tact and ingenuity, by still another col- 
laborator, but with not enough ingenuity to 
conceal the seams from eyes that have been fur- 
nished with glasses by modern Biblical criti- 
cism. These separate contributions aggregate, 
it is stated, more than four hundred in number, 



The LIGHT from the MONUMENTS 2^ 

in a book which ordinarily contains less than 
forty pages. Well has an able writer ex- 
claimed, ''Was there ever such a literary patch 
quilt" ? His language would have been none 
too strong had he said "crazy quilt." 

Yet this mixed product, in which fable and 
fiction and fraud, legend and fancy and super- 
stition, have been strangely commingled, has 
been accepted by a people, under the special 
guidance of God and his Spirit, for thousands 
of years as their sacred and inspired Scriptures, 
and as the trustworthy record of their national 
life; has contained for the world its highest 
standard of ethical teaching; has preserved a 
pure monotheistic conception of Deity amid the 
grossest polytheism ; and was accepted and en- 
dorsed by the incarnate Son of God, who was 
the most exalted Teacher of truth the world 
has ever known, as the literal and authoritative 
word of God. 

Of course, under the ruthless hand of this ex- 
treme destructive criticism, not only the early 
and long accepted date of the origin of the 
books of the Old Testament and the Mosaic 
authorship of the Pentateuch disappear, but the 
historicity, the truthfulness, the trustworthi- 



24 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

ness, and the divine authority of these ancient 
writings are gone. It is a surgical operation, 
not for the saving of hfe, but for the destroy- 
ing of life. The student's study is made a dis- 
secting room. From the dismembered body 
the life-blood oozes away. 

But a new light has come upon the old Book, 
and that from the quarter from which it was 
most needed and could only be expected, and it 
has come with such force and abundance that 
all eyes can see it. Witnesses to the truthful- 
ness of the records can now be subpoenaed and 
put upon the stand. Contemporaneous and con- 
firmatory records of an unimpeachable charac- 
ter have been discovered. Tablets, cylinders, 
monuments, buried libraries, and ancient cities 
have come forth from their long graves, and 
united their testimony in favor of the claims 
of the Hebrew Scriptures. Oriental archaeology 
is collecting and displaying its rich treasures 
for the confirmation of faith. The plains of 
Egypt, and the hills of Moab, Nineveh and 
Babylon and Chaldea, Pithom and Lachish, 
the mighty fortress, and Ur of the Chaldees, 
the place of the nativity of Abraham, have all 
been heard from. Abraham, Joseph and 



The LIGHT from the MONUMENTS 25 

Moses, Sargon, Esarhaddon, Tiglathpileser, 
Ahasuerus and Belshazzar have been clothed 
with flesh and blood. 

It has seemed to be a remarkable providence 
that just at the time when the Old Testament 
was severely assailed, and stood alone before 
its accusers, and the hearts of many of its 
friends were quaking with fear, the pick and 
the spade should unearth these mighty wit- 
nesses, which had been buried and preserved 
from destruction for thousands of years be- 
neath the sands of the desert and the ruins of 
almost forgotten cities. In the presence of this 
new evidence many of the conclusions of the 
extreme criticism have already been abandoned. 
A reaction towards the traditional faith has set 
in. Faith is being confirmed by sight. The 
excavators are marshaling their witnesses in 
convincing array, and the Bible is becoming 
not only a true Book, in a sense as never before, 
but a new Book in the light of patient and suc- 
cessful research. 

All the results of modern criticism that have 
been valuable (and these are by no means few) 
will be preserved. But the hasty and conjec- 
tural conclusions which will not stand the test 



26 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

of the increasing light will be buried in the 
graves which the excavators are digging. What 
Schliemann has done for ancient Troy and My- 
cense is being done over and over again for 
the cities, the men, and the events of Hebrew 
history; and the Old Testament is taking its 
place again as accredited history among those 
whose faith in it had been disturbed. 

Archaeology has produced its corroborative 
evidence to the early date and facts of the New 
Testament books as well as the Old, and is 
modifying very materially the views of some of 
the ablest and most candid scholars. Prof. 
William M. Ramsay, of Aberdeen, Scotland, a 
prominent leader in higher criticism, has been 
led by explorations made in Asia Minor to re- 
tract in a manly fashion his adverse opinions 
as to the historic character of the Book of Acts 
and the genuineness and authenticity of some 
of the Epistles. He speaks for the reactionary 
change of view of other scholars, as well as his 
own, when he says: "Such extreme opinions 
are now held chiefly by the less educated en- 
thusiasts, who catch up the views of the great 
scholars and exaggerate them with intense but 
ill-informed fervor, seeing only one side of the 



The LIGHT from the MONUMENTS 27 

case, and both careless and ignorant of the 
opposite side." 

But it is upon the pages of the Old Testa- 
ment especially that archaeology has been 
throwing the abundant light of its confirma- 
tory testimony, fixing, in the judgment of 
many scholars, beyond a reasonable doubt, the 
early date of the earliest books, and establish- 
ing indisputably the reality of many of the 
names of persons and places, and the historic 
accuracy of many records, which it was becom- 
ing fashionable to regard as mythical and un- 
worthy of scholarly credence. What has been 
brought to light inspires confidence that when 
other tablets and monuments, already in the 
hands of excavators, or still buried deep in the 
mounds of earth, shall be deciphered, the whole 
Old Testament will stand substantially con- 
firmed and unchallenged before the scholarship 
of the world. The results of the progress thus 
far made in archaeological research justify a 
presumption in favor of the accuracy of the en- 
tire record, in the absence of unquestioned con- 
tradictory evidence. Prof. J. F. McCurdy 
says : *Tt is now in place to use the word 'il- 
lustrate' almost exclusively, instead of 'confirm' 



28 WHY zi'c BELIEVE the BIBLE 

in describing the Biblical function of the monu- 
ments. The stadium of needed vindication of 
the historical accuracy of the Old Testament 
is now as good as past in our progress towards 
the final goal of truth and knowledge." 

Of course, archceolog}' does not, and cannot, 
touch the question of the divine inspiration of 
the Scriptures which makes them the Word 
of God, except indirectly in so far as it estab- 
lishes their truthfulness. That question is be- 
yond its province, and the claim of the Scrip- 
tures to be given by inspiration of God must 
be determined by other considerations. But 
archaeology has already imparted to the ancient 
Book a new light and meaning and value; has 
surrounded it by a glory and a fascination 
which, with all the sacredness with which it 
has been invested in the eye of Christian faith, 
it did not formerly possess; and has opened to 
the devout student of it a new world of delight 
and spiritual instruction. 

C. T. Ball, in his able illustrated volume, en- 
titled ''Light from the East," prefaces its rich 
chapters with these words : 'T sincerely enw 
those readers to whom these illustrations of the 
Bible, derived from earlier and contemporary 



The LIGHT from the MONUMENTS 29 

sources, will come invested with all the charm 
of the novel and the unexpected. They will 
find the sacred writings with which they are 
familiar, acquiring fresh force, significance and 
value, by comparison and contrast with the lit- 
erary remains and monumental records of the 
great empires and people which so powerfully 
affected the fortunes of Israel. Their Old 
Testament will become to them a New Testa- 
ment in the light of Oriental archaeology.'' 

Similar language has been used by Prof. Ira 
M. Price, of the University of Chicago. "Our 
old Old Testament has now become a marvel- 
lously new Old Testament. Many of its trans- 
formers were peoples whose ambitions were 
coeval with the abode of man, whose policy was 
'might establishes right,' and whose interests 
were supremely selfish. These nations formed 
the background of Israel's life, and gave it 
many a tint, many a shade, and spots of darkest 
dye. But their records, chiseled in adamantine 
volumes, stamped in perishable clay, painted in 
the darkness of the tombs, or cut on mountain 
side, bring impartial, unimpeachable and con- 
clusive proof of the veracity of the Old Testa- 
ment." 



30 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

So numerous already are the results of arch- 
aeological researches, in many lands and by 
many hands, that reference can be made to only 
a few of those which have a direct bearing upon 
the Old Testament. As has already been said, 
the history of the Hebrew nation was inter- 
woven with the history of surrounding domi- 
nant nations. For a considerable period of its 
history, Canaan was subject to Egypt, and the 
Israelites were in bondage to the mighty Pha- 
roahs. For a still longer period Syria was a 
subject nation to Babylonia and i\ssyria. 
Evetts, in his valuable work, entitled ''New 
Light on the Bible and the Holy Land," says : 
"It is hardl}^ too much to say that the history of 
Western Asia, from the eleventh or twelfth cen- 
tury before Christ, down to the sixth, is the 
history of Assyria and Babylonia. Armenia, 
Syria and parts of Asia Minor were tributary 
to them during a great part of that period, and 
the influence which these great nations exer- 
cised upon the civilization of the surrounding 
countries can hardly be exaggerated. These 
considerations show of what importance the 
study of the cuneiform inscriptions must be for 
the understanding of the history of Israel." 



The LIGHT from the MONUMENTS 3 1 

The intimate connection of the Hfe of the 
Hebrew nation with the Hfe of the more numer- 
ous and powerful nations which were contig- 
uous to it, and also the linguistic family tie 
which bound them together, make these re- 
cently discovered histories of inestimable worth 
in the confirmation of the historic records of 
God's ancient people; indeed, as has already 
been remarked, they are the only records with 
which the inspired records can be compared. 
The writer just quoted observes: ''Since the 
language of the Assyrians and Babylonians 
was a Semitic language, closely allied to the 
Hebrew, the m.onuments of it that have been 
discovered during this century are of great 
value for comparison with the language of the 
Old Testament ; and as the study of the cunei- 
form inscriptions progresses, it may be expected 
that the two branches of the Semitic family of 
speech will throw more and more light upon 
one another." Or to quote again from Prof. 
Sayce : "The Scriptures of the Old Testament 
are a fragment of that ancient oriental litera- 
ture, other fragments of which are being ex- 
humed from the mounds of Egypt, of Assyria 
and of Babylonia." 



32 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

In reference to the extent of the discoveries 
already made, it may be said in passing that 
they are very numerous, far exceeding the abil- 
ity of the decipherers to interpret, and they are 
multiplying rapidly every year. The Royal 
Museums of Constantinople and Berlin, the 
Louvre in Paris, the British Museum in Lon- 
don, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, 
and the Museum of the University of Pennsyl- 
vania, are the possessors of large deposits of 
these ancient treasures. Publications many 
times exceeding the whole literature of the Old 
Testament have already appeared. The British 
Museum alone has issued 200 quarto pages and 
nearly 450 folio pages, and has more than 30,- 
000 tablets which have not yet been translated. 
Probably not one-fourth of these valuable 
"finds" has been given to the public. This 
cuneiform literature which has been unearthed 
is not only remarkable for its bulk, but for the 
extent of time which it covers, stretching back 
five thousand years before Christ, or long be- 
fore the beginnings of recorded history, and 
down to the Christian era. It has been stated 
by one authority that "that portion of the li- 
brary of Sardanapalus which has already been 



The LIGHT from the MONUMENTS 33 

rescued from the ruins of his palace consists 
of considerably more than twelve thousand clay- 
tablets, inscribed with compositions of various 
dates/' and that *'there are inscriptions from 
Assyria and Babylonia contemporary with 
every period of Old Testament literature." 

Another writer has said : "During the last 
half century a new world has been opened up 
before us by the excavators and decipherers of 
the ancient monuments of the east, the great 
civilizations of the past have risen up, as it 
were, from their graves, and we find ourselves 
face to face with the contemporaries of Ezekiel 
and Hezekiah, of Moses and of Abraham." Of 
course, the great bulk of these tablets and mon- 
umental inscriptions pertain to matters of local 
and national interest. But enough of them 
have a direct bearing upon Old Testament his- 
tory to strengthen amazingly a Biblical faith, 
and excite the liveliest expectations in regard 
to future discoveries. 

The famous Rosetta stone, which is now in 
the British Museum, was discovered by a 
Frenchman, by the name of Boussard, in 1799, 
near the mouth of the Nile. The finding of this 
stone, with its trilingual inscription, whose de- 



34 WUYwe BELIEVE the BIBLE 

cipherment required many years of patient 
study, was the beginning of the unfolding of 
the buried history of a people which antedated 
the earliest Hebrew records by more than 3,000 
years. Out of the sands of Egypt have come 
obelisks, temples, tombs, mummy forms (some 
Oif which have been identified as the rulers 
whom the children of Israel knew to their sor- 
row) and tablets, which carry back a high civ- 
ilization so far as to make the remotest Hebrew 
history appear to be quite modern, and which, 
when contemporary with that history, give to 
it a reality and vividness which are most im- 
pressive. The Hebrew records have an Egyp- 
tian coloring, and harmonize perfectly with 
what the sands have revealed of the life and 
character of the ancient Egyptians and their 
august rulers. To look upon the preserved 
forms, raised from their long burial, of the 
Pharoah of the oppression and the Pharaoh of 
the exodus is to divest the history of the chil- 
dren of Israel of all doubt and uncertainty, to 
give life and personality to the names of a re- 
mote past, and to cause the tragic events of the 
Old Testament to pass before the mind with 
all the distinctness of unquestioned history. 



The LIGHT from the MONUMENTS 35 

In the early seventies of the last century, 
Professor Maspero, who was officially con- 
nected with the Museum in Bulak, had his at- 
tention called to the fact that valuable relics, 
more valuable than any which had before been 
found, were offered for sale at different places 
along the Nile. Among them were scarabs of 
great rarity, which belonged to monarchs of 
ancient dynasties, of whose history little or 
nothing was known, were worn by them as 
amulets or seal-rings, and bore the private 
hieroglyphic marks of their owners. It was 
evident that some new tomb or burial place had 
been opened. For a long time it was impos- 
posible to trace these relics or to discover the 
secret place from which they had been brought 
to light. At length, after various efforts, in- 
cluding the arrest and imprisonment of one of 
the discoverers, the secret was divulged, and at 
Deir-el-Bahari, near Thebes, was found deeply 
buried in the earth a royal tomb which con- 
tained nearly forty mummies of kings, queens, 
princes and high-priests of religion. It has 
been said: ''There is nothing in history that 
parallels the dramatic enthusiasm of such a dis- 
covery as this. The wonderful news was sent 



36 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

by telegraph to England and France, and every- 
where awoke the curiosity of the world. The 
silence of thirty centuries was broken. A new 
chapter had been written in the history of poor 
desolate Eg}'pt." Descending through a deep 
shaft, and passing along dark winding pas- 
sages, the explorers, Professor ^Maspero and 
Emil Brugsch, found a mortuar}' chamber filled 
with yellow mummies, yases, funeral urns, stat- 
uettes and other relics. By the dim candle- 
light they read upon the coffins with intense 
excitement and wonder the cartouches of the 
greatest kings in Eg}'ptian history. *T ask 
myself now," says Professor ^laspero, ''if I 
am not dreaming, when I see and touch the 
bodies of so many great personages, of whom 
I neyer expected to know more than the 
names." 

Later all these treasures were transferred 
to the museum, the resinous shrouds which had 
wrapped the bodies were unwound, and the 
papyri, which were still legible, were carefully 
read, and now, as another has said : ''There is 
visible in the Museum at Bulak a long row of 
mummies, whose very names fill our whole 
imagination with amazement ; there is the king 



The LIGHT from the MONUMENTS 37 

who knew Joseph; there is the father of Pha- 
raoh's daughter, and the founder of the dynasty 
that dwelt in Zoan. They are dead as stones, 
but each *being dead yet speaketh,' as plainly 
as did Abel/' 

These unimpeachable witnesses, preserved 
by divine Providence through the silence and 
darkness of centuries from the destructive tooth 
of time and the destroying hand of man, are 
brought forth from their graves at a time when 
most needed, by an ever- watchful God to bear 
testimony to the truthfulness of his Holy 
Word. It is impossible to present in detail the 
specific bearing of Egyptian discoveries upon 
Biblical history. It may be stated briefly that 
**thus dates are fixed, and events are estab- 
lished, and an explanation furnished of a hun- 
dred mysteries. The declarations of the much- 
maligned Moses, who wrote in the simplicity 
of candid narration as an exact historian, are 
confirmed at every point." From inscriptions 
on tombs and the records of unrolled papyri, it 
is made evident that the exaltation of Joseph and 
the migration of his kindred to Egypt was dur- 
ing the Hy ksos supremacy. There is the record of 
a long-continued famine and the annual distri- 



38 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

bution of corn ; the f riendy relation of the Shep- 
herd-Kings towards their Hebrew neighbors; 
the downfall and expulsion of the Hyksos rul- 
ers, and the rise of a new and oppressive Power 
that "knew not Joseph" ; the identification of 
Rameses 11. as the Pharaoh of the oppression, 
his aggressive and cruel character, and his great 
activity in the erection of public buildings ; the 
significant discovery of bricks without straw; 
the degeneracy of the son of Rameses, Menep- 
tah by name, who was a weaker ruler, but a 
more oppressive tyrant ; the finding of the very 
name "Israel" three times in the inscriptions 
pertaining to his reign; his probable identifica- 
tion with the Pharaoh of the Exodus ; the loss 
of his son and heir, his first-born, by a melan- 
choly and sudden death, which harmonizes per- 
fectly with the record which Moses has left: 
"And it came to pass that at midnight the Lord 
smote all the first-born in the land of Egypt, 
from the first-born of Pharoah that sat on his 
throne, unto the first-born of the captive that 
was in the dungeon" — all these specific things 
and the general political conditions revealed by 
the monuments, into which the Biblical history 
fits with admirable precision, serve to establish 



The LIGHT from the MONUMENTS 39 

the faith of scholars in the accuracy and trust- 
worthiness of the Old Testament records. 

It has been said : "No discovery of the past 
quarter century has fired enthusiasm in oriental 
research more than the bringing to light in 
1887, in Tel-el-Amarna in Egypt, of those 
three hundred letters (or tablets) which proved 
to be international letters or dispatches, dating 
principally from about 1500 B.C.; that is, 
while Israel was still sojourning in Egypt." 
Renan, having declared with great positiveness 
that "writing was unknown in Israel until three 
or four hundred years after the time of Moses 
and Joshua," when he heard of this remarkable 
discovery which established the fact which he 
had so strenuously denied, simply refused to 
believe in the discovery — a short-hand method 
of treating adverse testimony. These letters, 
as has already been stated, were written in the 
cuneiform characters of Babylonia, and were 
addressed to the two Pharaohs, Amenothes III. 
and IV., by the princes and rulers of Babylonia, 
Assyria, Mesopotamia and Palestine, and con- 
tained various matters of official correspond- 
ence, such as would take place between subject 
nations and the supreme Power which held 



40 WHY lue BELIEVE the BIBLE 

them in subjection. They not only bear un- 
mistakable testimony to the wide diffusion of 
education at that early date and to the fact 
"that the Babylonian was the official language 
of diplomatic intercourse throughout the whole 
of Western Asia/' but they shed much light 
upon the social relations and the political con- 
ditions existing at that time; and especially do 
they confirm the statements of the Scriptures 
in reference to the importance and power of a 
people about whom there was previously con- 
siderable mysterv^ not to say open skepticism. 
The reference is to the Hittites, who inhabited 
the northern territory of Palestine. They are 
often spoken of in the Old Testament as a nu- 
merous and formidable foe, inhabiting the land 
which God gave to Abraham, possessing mighty 
fastnesses, and stretching their conquests over 
much territory; and it was asserted by hostile 
critics that the writer had indulged in much 
pure fiction about them. But these tablets from 
Tel-el-Amarna contain more than thirty refer- 
ences to these people, to their origin, their prox- 
imity, their aggressiveness, and their great 
power, which made them sometimes invincible 
and often a terror to their neighbors. These 



The LIGHT from the MONUMENTS 41 

tablets and the Hittite inscriptions which have 
been discovered elsewhere, have again put to 
silence the voice of hostile criticism against the 
Bible, and established the veracity of its state- 
ments to the very letter. As another has said : 
"It was often objected to the Scripture record 
that history knew nothing of Hittites contig- 
uous to Syria — Hittites who might unite with 
Egypt in delivering Israel. The Hittites were 
thought of as a contemptible little tribe around 
Hebron. But this objection will be urged no 
longer. Monuments extending from Lydia in 
Asia Minor to Carchemish on the Euphrates, 
have established the existence of a great Hittite 
empire, so strong as not to shun conflict with 
Egypt and Assyria." 

This is but one illustration of many of the 
rashness of some critics in advancing opinions 
which rest only upon lack of knowledge, a lack 
which the work of the explorer is constantly 
supplying. Such illustrations are numerous 
enough to justify the severe language of Pro- 
fessor Sayce : "Time after time statements (in 
the Scripture) have been assumed to be untrue, 
because we cannot bring forward other evi- 
dence in support of the facts which they record. 



42 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

The critic has made his own ignorance the 
measure of the credibiHty of an ancient docu- 
ment." In this way it was asserted that Baby- 
lonian armies could not have marched in Pales- 
tine in the time of Abraham, and that Baby- 
lonian kings could not have established their 
empire there, and that the story of the priest- 
king, Melchizedek, being unsupported, was 
therefore unhistorical. The theory was ad- 
vanced and persistently advocated, that the 
fourteenth chapter of Genesis was a piece of 
pure fiction, manufactured by reason of a de- 
sire to magnify the character of Abraham, and 
utterly unworthy of credence. But now all this 
adverse criticism has been exploded. The story 
of the campaign of Chedorlaomer and his 
Babylonian allies has been found to be a his- 
toric fact. Mr. Pinches has discovered the 
names of Amraphel (Khammurabi) and Ched- 
orlaomer (Kudur-lagamar), and Tidal (Tud- 
ghal), and Arioch (Eri-Aku) on the ancient 
tablets, and the use of these names, with the 
accompanying explanatory phrases, which un- 
til recently have been unknown outside of the 
Bible, determine beyond a reasonable doubt the 
early date and authenticity of the Biblical 



The LIGHT from the MONUMENTS 43 

record. Professor Hommel says: "For it is 
absolutely inconceivable that a Jew of the post- 
exilic period should have been the first to de- 
rive from the sacred Babylonian records such 
exact information in regard tO' an incident in 
the history of the earliest kings of Babylon. 
. . . The authenticity of a narrative, such 
as that under consideration, is in itself an un- 
answerable criticism upon the views which are 
now in fashion with regard to the credibility of 
the ancient Hebrew tradition. The subject 
matter of the present chapter [that is, Gen. 
xiv.] will, therefore, forever remain a stumb- 
ling-block in the path of those who refuse to 
recognize a single line of the Pentateuch to 
be genuine, and, try how they may to remove 
it, it will continue to defy their persistent ef- 
forts." 

Professor Price concludes his consideration 
of this chapter as follows : "So that the testi- 
mony of the monuments is to the effect that this 
chapter is not to be regarded in any sense as a 
bit of fiction, but as a genuine scrap of a record 
of a veritable old Western campaign of the 
allied kings of Mesopotamia." 

One of the most interesting and valuable dis- 



44 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

coveries of archaeological research is what is 
called the "Moabite Stone," which was discov- 
ered in 1868 by Rev. F. Klein, a missionary. 
It was found at Diban, the Dibon of Isaiah 
15 :2. At first, Mr. Klein had Httle idea of its 
value or bearing upon Old Testament history, 
but attempted to purchase it as a relic for the 
Museum of Berlin. An earnest competition for 
its possession between the German and French 
authorities excited the suspicion of the Arabs 
that it contained marvellous powers, and they, 
fearing to lose such a prize, built a fire under it, 
and then poured upon it cold water, so that it 
was broken in fragments. These they dis- 
tributed among themselves as charms to pro- 
tect them and their homes from evil. But, fort- 
unately, the most of the fragments were after- 
ward secured, and by the aid of paper-squeezes 
or impressions, taken before it was broken, 
were reset, and the stone is now in the Louvre 
in Paris in a fairly complete form. The trans- 
lation of the inscription showed that it was a 
record of the wars of Mesha, King of Moab, 
with Omri, King of Israel, and his successors, 
Ahab, Jehoram and Jehoshaphat. It confirms 
and supplements the story contained in the 



The LIGHT from the MONUMENTS 45 

second Book of Kings. It contains the names 
of towns and cities, which have long since dis- 
appeared, but with which the Bible has made 
us familiar. It also declares that the king un- 
dertook his wars at the command of his god, 
Chemosh, who is mentioned in the Old Testa- 
ment as "the abomination of Moab"; that is, 
the idol deity of the Moabites, which was an 
abomination to Jehovah. 

The characters of the inscription are Phoe- 
nician, and the language is closely allied to the 
ancient Hebrew, as would be expected, when 
we consider the common origin of the Jews 
and the Moabites, the one being the descen- 
dants of Abraham and the other the descen- 
dants of his nephew, Lot. The date of the 
stone takes us back to the days of Ahab and 
Jezebel, Jehoshaphat and Jehu, Elijah and Eli- 
sha, Naaman, the leper, and the Shunamitish 
widow. The great value of the stone is ex- 
pressed in the following paragraph, taken from 
the monograph of Rev. W. P. Walsh : "There 
is scarcely a line of this interesting record 
which has not its links either with the geo- 
graphy, the history, or the language of the 
Bible; and that not only in the way of corrob- 



46 WHY "cje BELIEVE the BIBLE 

orating the information which we already ob- 
tain from that source, but in the way of adding 
to that knowledge, and by so doing explaining 
and illustrating many points which hitherto 
have been perplexing and obscure. Indeed, in 
this respect the ^loabite stone stands pre-emi- 
nent amongst those old monuments, which 
have risen, as it were, from the grave of ages 
to bear witness to the truth of the Sacred 
Record. It is at once a confirmation and a sup- 
plement, a witness to attest the truth of what 
we already know from the Books of Inspira- 
tion, and an Interpreter to clear up by its silent, 
but eloquent testimony, many points which the 
brevity of the Scriptural Records has left un- 
explained, but which shed new light and inter- 
est upon the Records when once they are per- 
ceived." 

We cannot take time to unfold the full mean- 
ing and bearing of this discovery upon Old 
Testament history. The stone is but four feet 
high and two feet wide, a stone of black basalt, 
and contains only thirty-four lines of inscrip- 
tion, some of which are imperfect. But it is a 
mighty witness to the truthfulness of the in- 
spired Record, for which it had patiently 



The LIGHT from the MONUMENTS 47 

waited for three millenniums. Mr. Walsh has 
well said : ''Now, in this nineteenth century 
of doubt and skepticism, when infidelity grows 
daring and faith grows dim, this patriarchal 
Stone of Moab, with the snows of three thou- 
sand years upon its head, stands forth to re- 
buke our unbelief, and to give fresh testimony 
to the Oracles of God." 

Brief reference must be made to the crea- 
tion tablets of Assyria which archaeology has 
brought tO' light. It is well known that almost 
all the great nations of the east have had their 
traditions of the creation of the world and of 
man, the primeval fall and the deluge. The 
finding of actual tablets containing these tradi- 
tions, and their comparison with the Biblical 
account, have been matters of absorbing inter- 
est. Of course, the conclusions reached have 
been various, and have possibly been deter- 
mined by the predispositions of men. These 
tablets of the creation are supposed to have 
been seven in number. Not all of them have 
been found, and some are only fragments. The 
following are specimen translations: 

"There was a time when what is overhead was not 
called heaven, 



48 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

What is beneath was not yet called earth. 

The abyss, the ancient, their progenitor, 

The mother, Tiamat, was the bearer of them all. 

Their waters were all together in one place, 

The fields were not prepared, the moor was not to be 

seen. 
At that time none of the gods had appeared, 
Neither was any one's name implored, nor was any 

destiny fixed. 
(Then) the gods were created . , . 
Lachmu and Lachamu issued forth, 
And they brought forth . . . An-Sar (and) Ki-Sar 

were created. 
A long time elapsed . . . 

(Ere) the god Anu (Bel and Ea were bom). 
An-Sar and Ki-Sar (bore them)." 

After describing the victory of Merodach 
over Tiamat, the goddess of chaos, the heavens 
are constructed out of the skin of Tiamat, and 
the three gods, Anu, Bel and Ea dwell there. 
Then the stars are fixed in their places, and the 
periods of time are bounded by months and 
years. Finally upon the seventh tablet is an 
account of the creation of animal life. 

"At that time the gods in their assembly created . . . 
They prepared the mighty . . . 
They created the living creatures, 
The cattle of the field, the (wild) beasts of the field, 
and creeping things; 



The LIGHT from the MONUMENTS 49 

(They prepared dwelling places) for the living crea- 
tures ; 

They distributed the creeping things of the field, the 
creeping things of the city. 

. . . the creeping things, the sum of all creation." 

A careful comparison of the Babylonian ac- 
count with the account in Genesis discloses 
some marked resemblances, and some unlike- 
nesses which are no less marked and significant. 
Genesis speaks of God as the Creator of all 
things, while the tablets describe several gods 
as first brought forth, and then joining in the 
work of creation. Moreover, the tablets repre- 
sent certain elemental forces, as mighty deities 
at war with each other. But the most marked 
unlikeness is that Genesis teaches a pure mono- 
theism, while the tablets partake of the faith 
of the people and are polytheistic. 

The monuments give us also' the record of 
the existence of the Sabbath or rest-day, with 
some variations from the Biblical account. It 
was to be observed strictly by high and low, 
by the king as well as by the people. ''Flesh 
cooked on the coals or in the smoke may not be 
eaten; the clothing of the body may not be 
changed; white garments may not be put on; 
sacrifices may not be offered ; the king may not 



50 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

ride in his chariot, nor speak in public." It is 
evident from this record that the origin of the 
Sabbath was not of late date among the Jews, 
as has sometimes been alleged ; but its existence 
can be traced back as far as human history- 
runs, and its institution may well have com- 
memorated God's rest from his creative work. 

The monuments furnish, so far as known, no 
verbal record of the fall in Eden. But this 
event is supposed to be set forth on an ancient 
cylinder, which represents the picture of a tree 
bearing fruit, with a man and woman sitting 
beneath, and the form of a serpent behind the 
woman. 

The Bab3donian deluge tablet is the most 
complete of all, and has also many striking re- 
semblances to the Biblical record. But there is 
found in it the expression of no moral purpose, 
and no judgment against prevailing sin, but 
only the decision of a capricious Deity, mixed 
with much fanciful mytholog}' and the same 
polytheistic faith. 

It may be said in passing that Lenormant af- 
firms that the tale of the deluge is ''a universal 
tradition among all the branches of the human 
family; excepting, however, the blacks," and 



The LIGHT from the MONUMENTS 51 

that "it must of necessity be a recollection of a 
great and terrible occurrence, which impressed 
the imagination of the ancestors of our race so 
powerfully as never to have been forgotten by 
their descendants." He also' declares that a 
remembrance prevailing everywhere, so precise 
and SO' concordant, cannot have been produced 
by a myth arbitrarily invented. And Mr. Ho- 
worth, in his able work on ''The Mammoth and 
the Flood," having collected the diluvial tradi- 
tions of many races and countries, and a great 
mass of palaeontological evidence, asserts that 
they all point unmistakably to "a widespread 
calamity, involving a flood on a great scale. I 
do not see how the historian, the archaeologist 
and palaeontologist can avoid making this con- 
clusion in future a prime factor in their discus- 
sions, and I venture to think that before long it 
will be accepted as unanswerable." Other emi- 
nent scientists agree with this belief, notably 
Principal Dawson and the Duke of Argyle. 

In comparing these written accounts, we find 
that the Biblical is characterized by a beautiful 
simplicity, by a conspicuous purity of thought 
and style, by an exalted m.oral tone, and by a 
recognition of one God, the infinite Spirit, 



52 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

Creator of man and of all things, infinite in 
wisdom, in goodness and in power, and right- 
eous in all his ways. These characteristics are 
conspicuously absent from the other records. 

If, now, it be asked how can the likeness be- 
tween the records be accounted for, shall it be 
answered, first, that the Hebrew record was 
borrowed from the Babylonian, or secondly, 
that the Babylonian was borrowed from the 
Hebrew, or thirdly, that "their likeness is due 
to a common inheritance," to an early revela- 
tion and actual history, the knowledge of which 
was transmitted with greater or less purity 
from father to son, and from generation to 
generation? (There is a fourth suggestion that 
these similar traditions among different na- 
tions were in no way connected with each other, 
but were the result of a similar way of think- 
ing, "the exercise of the common human facul- 
ties." This suggestion is so far contrary to all 
reason, and so utterly incredible, as hardly to 
deserve mention at all.) It will be granted 
that such transmitted knowledge never becomes 
purer and simpler, but rather gathers increase 
and admixture and extravagance in the 
transmission. As another has said: "The 



The LIGHT from the MONUMENTS 53 

simpler form is the groundwork of the Biblical 
narrative; and the simpler form, according to 
the generally recognized principle, is that near- 
est the source, most closely akin to the occur- 
rence or the original record." The Hebrew 
account, therefore, could not have been derived 
from the Babylonian. It seems more than 
probable that the Babylonian record grew out 
of some earlier and purer faith. A distin- 
guished French author says : "The cosmogony 
and mythology ... of all nations are evi- 
dently primitive history, altered by oral tradi- 
tion, transformed by the imagination and sym- 
bolized." Principal Alfred Cave, after a candid 
and thorough examination of all facts and 
arguments that are germane to the discussion 
of this important question, concludes that the 
earlier chapters of Genesis contain traditions 
that are "primitive," "original," "of the high- 
est antiquity," "pure," and "must be histor- 
ical." This undoubtedly implies a divine il- 
lumination. But there can be no objection to 
this, since it is abundantly evident that God's 
ancient people were enabled to keep a mono- 
theistic faith and a pure tradition under a di- 
vine guidance and preservation. 



54 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

Evetts has well said: "But after all, this 
close connection between Canaan and Mesopo- 
tamia, both in earlier and in later times, only 
accentuates more strongly the independent 
character of the religious literature and the 
religious practice of the Jews. How much 
more marvellous does the Old Testament be- 
come, when it is clearly understood that it was 
written by members of a small nation or tribe, 
under the overshadowing influence of the su- 
preme power of Assyria and Babylonia !" The 
faith and tradition that were kept pure and 
simple by divine aid amid overwhelming temp- 
tations to apostasy may well be believed to 
have been received by divine illumination. The 
marvel in the one case is no greater than the 
marvel in the other. 

We cannot forbear quoting the weighty lan- 
guage of Mr. Gladstone in ''The Impregnable 
Rock of Holy Scripture," in which he contrasts 
the Biblical account of the creation with the 
record of the tablets. ''The two are evidently 
accounts proceeding from a common source, 
but derived through channels partly or wholly 
independent. The one conies through a pow- 
erful and civilized empire; the other through 



The LIGHT from the MONUMENTS 55 

an obscure nomad family. In the relative su- 
periority of the Mosaic narrative, all the rules 
of merely human likelihoods are reversed ; and 
the presumption of a divine illumination is pro- 
portionately augmented. But the unexpected 
antiquity of the inferior legend [more than 
2,000 years B.C.] attest by an independent 
witness, if not the truth, yet at least the pre- 
sumable origin of its transcendent rival." 

In view of the facts which have been pre- 
sented, which are but a small part of the ac- 
cumulated testimony of the ancient monu- 
ments, the language of Professor Sayce seems 
to be not unwarranted. "To the assertion that 
these books are the fabrication of an age long 
subsequent to the events they profess to record, 
and that the events themselves are legendary 
and mythical, the Oriental archaeologist returns 
an emphatic no." Again he says: "For the 
archaeologist, at any rate, the Pentateuch is, as 
it were, rooted in the Mosaic age." And again 
he says: "I see no reason for denying that 
the Pentateuch is substantially the work of 
Moses." 

It is due to Professor Sayce that he be al- 
lowed to explain what he means by "substan- 



56 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

tially." The entire paragraph is as follows: 
"If, then, I were to be asked if I believe that 
Moses wrote the Pentateuch, I should answer 
that such a belief seems to me to involve con- 
siderably fewer difficulties than does the con- 
trary belief of the 'higher criticism.' Of course, 
such a belief does not necessarily mean that the 
Hebrew legislator wrote the Pentateuch pre- 
cisely in the form in which we now possess it. 
It does not exclude the fact of later revision or 
the addition of editorial notes (for example the 
account of Moses' death). Jewish tradition 
avers that in its present form the Pentateuch 
has come to us from Ezra, and the doubts that 
have been cast upon the tradition savor of 
hypercriticism. But I see no reason for deny- 
ing that the Pentateuch is substantially the 
work of Moses." 

George Rawlinson wrote forty years ago : 
"It is highly probable that he (Moses) also 
made use of documents. So much fanciful 
speculation has been advanced, so many vain 
and baseless theories have been built up, in 
what is called the 'document-hypothesis' con- 
cerning Genesis, that I touch the point with 
some hesitation, and beg at once to be under- 



The LIGHT from the MONUMENTS 57 

stood as not venturing to dogmatize in a mat- 
ter of such difficulty. But both a priori proba- 
bility and the internal evidence seem to me to 
favor the opinion of Vitringa and Calmet, that 
Moses consulted monuments or records of for- 
mer ages, which had descended from the fam- 
ilies of the patriarchs, and by collecting, ar- 
ranging, adorning, and where they were de- 
ficient, completing them, composed his his- 
tory. 

All tends to assure us that in this marvel- 
lous volume we have no old wives' tales, no 
'cunningly devised fables' (2 Pet. i :i6), but *a 
treasure of wisdom and knowledge' (Col. 2 13), 
as important to the historical inquirer as to the 
theologian. There may be obscurities — there 
may be occasionally, in names and numbers, ac- 
cidental corruptions of the text — there may be 
a few interpolations — glosses which have crept 
in from the margin ; but upon the whole it must 
be pronounced that we have in the Pentateuch 
a genuine and authentic work, and one which, 
even were it not inspired, would be, for the 
times and countries whereof it treats, the lead- 
ing and paramount authority. It is (let us be 
assured) MOSES who is still 'read in the syna- 



58 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

gogues every Sabbath day,' and they who 're- 
sist' him, by impugning his veracity, like Jannes 
and Jambres of old, 'resist the truth.' " And 
this judgment has been wonderfully confirmed 
by the archaeological discoveries which the 
succeeding decades have brought to light, all 
of which, so far as they have been deciphered, 
seem to have been, without a discordant note, 
in favor of the traditional faith. 



THE VOICE OF HISTORY 



''In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall 
every word he established," (11. Corinthians 

13:1-) 



CHAPTER 11. 

THE VOICE 0:P HISTORY. 

Christianity is pre-eminently a historical 
religion, historical in its origin and in its un- 
folding, and thereby brought into visible touch 
and connection with contemporaneous history. 
It is customary to divide history into "sacred" 
and "profane," terms, which do not designate 
parts that succeed each other in the order of 
time, but parts that are synchronous, and go to 
make up the whole of history, the one seeking 
to penetrate and mould the other, and the sec- 
ond bearing witness more or less abundantly to 
the existence of the first. The dispensation of 
the Old Testament, which has been called "the 
first stage" of Christianity, a period of prepara- 
tion for its full manifestation when Christ 
should come "in the fullness of time," was 
largely the history of a single nation, including, 
of course, its relations to contemporaneous and 
contiguous nations, whose history came under 



62 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

the head of "profane." In the New Testament 
the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles are 
exclusively biographical and historical books, 
recounting the life and deeds of the great 
Founder of Christianity and his immediate dis- 
ciples, and they constitute a part of the re- 
corded history of the time in which they lived, 
and contain frequent allusions to the secular 
history which was going on simultaneously. 
The Epistles of the New Testament, which are 
more exclusively doctrinal from the nature of 
the case, have all of them a distinct historic set- 
ting, and it would naturally be expected that 
Christian history, being lived in the midst of 
secular history, and coming often into vital, 
and sometimes into antagonistic, relation to it, 
would find some confirmatory passages in its 
record. 

This characteristic of Christianity has been 
often spoken of, and is a very important and 
distinguishing characteristic. The eminent his- 
torian, George Rawlinson, says : "Christianity 
is in nothing more distinguished from the other 
religions of the world than in its objective and 
historical character. The religions of Greece 
and Rome, of Egypt, India, Persia, and the 



TA^ VOICE 0/ HISTORY 63 

East generally, were speculative systems which 
did not even postulate a historical basis." And 
Dean Stanley emphasizes this contrast between 
Christianity and other religions, when he says 
that ''it alone of all religions claims tO' be 
founded not on fancy or feeling, but on fact 
and truth." 

This characteristic is immensely to the ad- 
vantage of Christianity, that its doctrinal teach- 
ings are bound up with facts, and are based 
upon them, for if its alleged facts are proved to 
be historically verifiable and worthy of cre- 
dence, there is presumptive evidence that its 
doctrines are worthy of acceptance. The re- 
ligion is taken out of the realm of myths and 
legends, when the apostles of it can affirm : 
"What we have seen and heard, that declare we 
unto you." 

Moreover, such a religion invites careful his- 
torical investigation. It challenges inquiry, 
and appeals to secular history, so far as it is 
available, for confirmation of its facts. Chris- 
tianity, including its preparatory stage, is set 
forth in records which cover a period of several 
thousand years, and which contain "a kind of 
abridgment of the history of the world," down 



64 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

to a certain date. These records are to be com- 
pared with other contemporaneous records, 
which are known, or may be discovered, and if 
the facts recorded in sacred history are estab- 
lished so far as the comparison can be made, 
it is only fair to accept the credibility of all. 
The truthfulness of a part being clearly proved, 
the truthfulness of all may be safely asserted 
until there is discovered indisputable historical 
evidence to the contrary. 

This principle of historical criticism which is 
just and reasonable, unfortunately has not al- 
ways prevailed. During the past century a 
new science, so-called, of historical criticism 
has arisen, which has shown a disposition to 
relegate many things in the Sacred Scriptures 
to the region of legend and myth, and to believe 
nothing unless compelled to by outside testi- 
mony, and then only reluctantly, slowly yield- 
ing point by point in its method of doubt and 
denial, as it was driven to retreat before the 
advancing force of confirmatory evidence. 
"The skepticism in which the science origin- 
ated,'*' it has been said, the language having 
reference to both sacred and profane history, 
"has clung to it from first to last, and in recent 



T/j^ VOICE 0/ HISTORY 65 

times we have seen not only a greater leaning 
to the destructive than to the constructive side, 
but a tendency to push doubt and incredulity 
beyond due limits, to call in question without 
cause, and to distrust what is sufficiently estab- 
lished." 

Biblical criticism, which has recently been 
discussing with great earnestness the historicity 
of the books of the Old Testament, was applied 
earlier in the nineteenth century to the books of 
the New Testament. Much of it was destruc- 
tive in its spirit and unscientific in its method, 
and the names of Paulus, Bauer, Strauss, and 
Renan will long be remembered as the great 
leaders in this hostile assault upon the very 
citadel of Christianity. Able defenders were 
not wanting, who applied the principles of criti- 
cism in a reasonable and constructive manner 
to the Scriptures, with the final results of the 
discussion all on the side of the historical trust- 
worthiness and validity of the New Testament 
records. The discussion was welcomed by the 
friends of the Bible, for they believed that, in 
the end, faith would be established upon a more 
intelligent and enduring foundation. Their 
faith was amply justified, and it is doubtful, if 



66 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

again for a hundred years, if ever, the histo- 
ricity of the books of the New Testament will 
be so seriously or widely called in question. It 
was during that discussion that Niebuhr, a 
man of acknowledged leadership and of emi- 
nent historical and critical ability, put on record 
his deliberate conclusion: *'In my opinion he 
is not a Protestant Christian, who does not re- 
ceive the historical facts of Christ's earthly life, 
in their literal acceptance, with all their 
miracles, as equally authentic with any event 
recorded in history, and whose belief in them 
is not as firm and tranquil as his belief in the 
latter; who has not the most absolute faith in 
the Articles of the Apostles' Creed, taken in 
their grammatical sense ; who does not consider 
every doctrine and every precept of the New 
Testament as undoubtedlv divine revelation, in 
the sense of the Christians of the first century." 

In this chapter the evidence of history to the 
New Testament and the early Christian Church 
will be presented. The bearing of secular his- 
tory upon the Old Testament records has al- 
ready been considered under "The Light from 
the Monuments." 

It will be convenient to consider the topic of 



T/i^ VOICE of HISTORY (ij 

this chapter under two heads ; first, the evidence 
of secular history to the origin of Christianity, 
the character of its adherents and its rapid 
progress; and secondly, the testimony to the 
early existence and contents of the sacred books 
of the New Testament. 

Before presenting this evidence from secular 
sources, attention should be called tO' the almost 
innumerable allusions in the New Testament 
to the personal and political history of the time 
in which its books claim to have been written, 
allusions to the various rulers, Jewish and 
Roman, to the changes in the government in 
the land of Palestine, which was peculiarly 
mixed and changeable, to the social and polit- 
ical customs, and to many events which dis- 
closed the state of society and the characteris- 
tics of both rulers and people, all of which are 
confirmed by the statements of contempora- 
neous history, and harmonize perfectly with 
what we learn from uninspired writers. Here 
is a volume of evidence as to the date and trust- 
worthiness of the New Testament records, of 
which no one can have any idea who has not 
given careful study to it. It is safe to say that 
these sacred books must have been written in 



68 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

the first century of the Christian era, and could 
not have been written at any other time, either 
before or after. The incidental allusions, which 
occur on almost every page, often of so delicate 
a character that it is inconceivable that they 
could have been fictitious, or forged, or subse- 
quently imagined, settle the question of date 
and genuineness beyond a reasonable doubt. 

I. It could hardly be expected that Joseph- 
us, the Jewish historian, who was born A.D. 37, 
would record in detail the circumstances of the 
rise and growth of the new religion, which was 
so offensive to him, and so opposed to his 
national prejudices. Many things recorded by 
heathen writers, with which he must have been 
personally acquainted, he has passed by in si- 
lence, a silence which must be regarded as in- 
tentional. Yet Josephus has said enough, which 
can be accepted as genuine, to make him an un- 
willing witness to Christ and the truth of the 
gospel records. Among other things he has re- 
ported the adultery of Herod Antipas with his 
brother Philip's wife, and the execution of 
John the Baptist, calling him by his familiar 
gospel-name. This is his record of the crime 
and the tragedy: "Herodias was married to 



The VOICE of HISTORY 69 

Herod, the son of Herod the Great, who was 
born of Mariamne, the daughter of Simon, the 
high-priest, who had also a daughter Salome; 
after the birth of whom, Herodias, in shameful 
violation of the customs of our nation, allowed 
herself to marry Herod, the brother of her 
former husband by the same father, separating 
from him while he was living. Now this man 
held the office of tetrarch of Galilee." 

This statement is in exact harmony with the 
record in the Gospels, as is also the following 
statement about the rebuke administered by the 
righteous forerunner of Christ, and the penalty 
which he suffered in consequence: "Now 
some of the Jews thought the army of Herod 
had been destroyed by God in most righteous 
vengeance for the punishment inflicted upon 
John, surnamed the Baptist. For he taught the 
Jews to cultivate virtue, and to practise right- 
eousness towards each other, and piety towards 
God, and so to come to baptism. For he de- 
clared that this dipping would be acceptable to 
Him, if they used it, not with reference to the 
renunciation of certain sins, but to the purifica- 
tion of the body, the soul having been purified 
by righteousness. And when others thronged 



yo WHY "dje BELIEVE the BIBLE 

to him ( for they were profoundly mo^xd at the 
hearing of his words), Herod feared that his 
great influence over the men would lead them 
to some revolt (for they seemed ready to do 
anything by his advice) ; he therefore thought 
it much better to anticipate the evil by putting 
him to death, before he had attempted to make 
any innovation, than to allow himself to be 
brought into trouble, and then repent after 
some revolutionary movement had commenced. 
And so John, in consequence of the suspicion 
of Herod, was sent as a prisoner to the afore- 
mentioned castle of Machserus, and w^as there 
put to death." 

Here we have a considerable record of John 
the Baptist, his character and his work. He is 
called by his gospel-name, and is described as 
a preacher of righteousness who practised the 
baptism of repentance. He is spoken of as win- 
ning a great poptilarity and a wide following, 
as coming in conflict with Herod, and as being 
arrested and imprisoned. The place of his im- 
prisonment is told, and also the fact of his 
execution. All this is in exact accord with the 
gospel narrative. 

And more than this. In two passages, which 



The VOICE of HISTORY 71 

are undoubtedly genuine, Josephus has spoken 
of the trial and execution of James, the apostle, 
who was accused of "transgressing the laws," 
and whom he calls ''James, the Just," and "the 
most righteous of men" ; and in both passages 
he has represented him as "the brother of Jesus 
who was called Christ." Perhaps this is all we 
could expect from the pen of a Jewish historian, 
blinded with prejudice and determined to treat 
the new faith and its disciples with deserved 
contempt. Certain important facts are estab- 
lished which give reality to the beginnings of 
Christianity as a part of the history of the time 
and of the people among whom it had its origin. 
But the writings of heathen authors have 
been preserved, which speak more fully and 
unreservedly of the existence, the character, the 
sufferings, and the rapid increase of the early 
Christians. The passage from Tacitus, one of 
the most distinguished and careful historians 
of all times, who was born probably in the fifties 
of the first century, is well known. He is speak- 
ing of the burning of Rome in the reign of the 
Emperor Nero, and of the general belief that 
the conflagration was the work of the Emperor 
himself. The passage is as follows : "In order, 



^2 WHY "due BELIEVE the BIBLE 

therefore, to put a stop to the report, he laid 
the guilt, and inflicted the severest punish- 
ments, upon a set of people ^Yho were holden in 
abhorrence for their crimes, and called by the 
vulgar, Christians. The founder of that name 
was Christ, who suffered death in the reign of 
Tiberius, under his procurator, Pontius Pilate. 
This pernicious superstition, thus checked for 
awhile, broke out again, and spread not only 
over Judea, where the evil originated, but 
through Rome also, whither all things that are 
horrible and shameful find their way, and are 
practised. Accordingly, the first who were ap- 
prehended confessed, and then on their in- 
formation a vast multitude were convicted, not 
so much of the crime of setting Rome on fire 
as of hatred of mankind." 

Then the historian goes on to describe their 
punishment by the most shocking methods that 
Neronian cruelty could devise : the helpless vic- 
tims being disguised in the skins of wild beasts, 
and worried and torn to death by dogs, being 
crucified, being clothed in inflammable cover- 
ing and set on fire as torches to illumine the 
Emperor's gardens; while Nero took a brutal 
enjoyment in the hideous spectacle, and 



The VOICE of HISTORY 73 

mingled with the populace in the dress of a 
charioteer, until the popular feeling was com- 
pletely turned, and the poor sufferers "came to 
be pitied as victims, not so much to the public 
good as to the cruelty of one man." 

Here we are in possession of certain valuable 
facts in evidence. The founder of this sect of 
Christians was a man called Christ. He lived 
under Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator in 
Judea. He suffered death in the reign of Ti- 
berius. The new religion, which was tempo- 
rarily checked by the death of its founder, re- 
vived and spread widely, not only throughout 
Judea, but as far as Rome also. A vast multi- 
tude of the followers of Christ, who lived in 
Rome in the time of Nero, were falsely accused 
and cruelly tortured and slain. So far was this 
cruelty carried by the Emperor in the vain at- 
tempt to free himself from the charge of burn- 
ing the city, that the indifference and hatred of 
the people were changed to compassion, and 
undoubtedly the blood of the martyrs became 
the seed of the church. Tacitus himself evi- 
dently had no sympathy with the new religion 
and its multiplying followers. He calls it an 
"execrable superstition." He voices the popu- 



74 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

lar but absurd charge that they were guilty of 
"hatred of mankind" ; but he makes his record 
as a faithful historian, and has left to all subse- 
quent generations this indubitable testimony 
as to the origin and rapid growth of the Chris- 
tian religion, as well as to the fierce opposition 
which it encountered. 

vSuetonius also has left a brief record of the 
same persecution. His words are : "The Chris- 
tians were punished, a set of men of a new and 
mischievous superstition." Juvenal, in his first 
book of Satires, refers to the shocking punish- 
ment which was inflicted upon the early Chris- 
tians. Lucan in his Pharsalia, and Porphyry, 
writing against Christians, both bear witness to 
the existence of organized Christianity and the 
doctrines which distinguished its faith. 

But the most striking testimony of secular 
history is that which is given by Pliny, the 
younger, in his letter to the Emperor Trajan, 
asking for official instruction as to the manner 
in which he should deal with Christians in his 
province. He lived at the end of the first cen- 
tury. His letter is too long for quotation ; but 
it contains certain important evidential facts, 
viz. : that at that time Christians were numer- 



The VOICE of HISTORY 75 

ous and well known throughout Asia Minor; 
that they were of both sexes and of all ages, 
were found in the country as well as in the city, 
and formed so large a part of the inhabitants 
that in some places the heathen temples were 
deserted; that they were falsely accused and 
punished with the severest tortures, and yet for 
the most part remained steadfast and unflinch- 
ingly loyal to their new faith; that they were 
wont to meet together on the morning of the 
first day of the week, and sing a hymn to Christ 
as God ; and that they bound themselves by an 
oath at their meetings not to be guilty of theft, 
or robbery, or adultery, or the violation of their 
word or pledge, after which they ate in com- 
mon a harmless meal. 

These are facts of the greatest importance, to 
which Pliny bears testimony, viz. : the number, 
wide diffusion, worship, and conspicuous and 
conscientious purity and high moral character 
of Christians in an age of corruption and gross- 
est immorality, their devout reverence for 
Christ as the Son of God, and their habitual 
observance of the memorial rite of the Lord's 
Supper. In one thing only was he wrong, 
namely, when he, like Tacitus, accused them of 



76 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

being "haters of mankind/' a charge which 
could have arisen only from the fact that they 
deserted the temples and the national deities, 
on whose votive recognition and gracious favor 
the heathen believed that all prosperity in war 
and peace depended. Their neglect of the na- 
tional worship would leave the people exposed 
to the vengeance of their deities. Indeed, it 
was on this account alone that Pliny was led 
to seek the Emperor's instruction. Their per- 
secutions were visited upon them in order to 
drive them back to the worship which they had 
forsaken, to compel them to invoke the favor 
of the gods, and at the same time to offer frank- 
incense and wine before the statue of the Em- 
peror, who was worshipped as a god. When 
under the pressure of extreme torture any 
Christians weakened and did this, then their 
punishment was remitted, and they were set 
free. They could have purchased their liberty 
at any time at the price of renouncing Christ 
and going back to the national faith and wor- 
ship. Such citizens who were acknowledged 
to be honest, pure, truthful and peaceable, 
brought no weakness or damage to the nation. 
They were not the haters, but the lovers of 



T/^^ VOICE 0/ HISTORY ^y 

mankind. Their only crime was their rejection 
of heathen deities, and their acceptance of 
Christ as their Lord and Saviour. 

This is evident from the reply which the 
Emperor returned to Pliny's letter, which has 
also fortunately been preserved to us. "You 
have pursued the right course, my dear Pliny, 
in conducting the case of those Christians who 
have been brought before you [that is, in put- 
ting them to torture, and compelling them to 
recant their Christian faith, and worship the 
national deities]. ... If they are brought 
before you, and convicted, they must be pun- 
ished; yet with this proviso, that he who de- 
nies that he is a Christian, and confirms this 
denial by actually invoking our gods, however 
he may have been suspected in time past, shall 
obtain pardon upon his repentance." 

Trajan was careful to require that all accusa- 
tions against the rapidly increasing followers 
of Christ should be made openly, and not se- 
cretly or anonymously, as was also Hadrian, 
who in his rescript to Minucius Fundanus, Pro- 
consul of Asia, wrote : "If, therefore, any one 
accuses them, and proves that they have done 
anything contrary to the laws, do you deter- 



yB> WHY me BELIEVE the BIBLE 

mine accordingly, in proportion to the great- 
ness of the offence; but, by Hercules, if any 
one brings forward such an accusation slander- 
ously, take him and punish him for his impu- 
dence." 

These are the principal pagan authorities 
who bear confirmatory testimony to Christian 
facts. Christianity won its converts openly 
from among the people. It had its adherents in 
the official family of the Emperor. It came 
under the notice of the government, both by 
reason of its growing strength and the charac- 
ter of its disciples. Their doctrine separated 
them from the national faith and worship. 
Their attitude was calm and sublimely heroic 
in the face of the most cruel death. Their con- 
duct was not open to any charges of crimes 
contained in the national code. These things 
are matters of history. Christianity entered 
quickly into the life of the world, and com- 
pelled recognition in its annals. In an aston- 
ishingly brief period of time it took possession 
of the empire which did its utmost to extinguish 
it, and laid its victorious hand upon its institu- 
tions, its customs, its faith, its life, and its his- 
tory. 



The VOICE of HISTORY 79 

Gibbon, the historian of the Roman Empire, 
though his infidehty made it impossible for him 
to be just in his treatment of the Christian re- 
ligion, records its rise, the conspicuous virtues 
and excellences of its adherents, and its rapid 
spread and triumph, imtil ''in the reign of Con- 
stantine it superseded all other religions, and 
became the religion of the empire." This he 
calls "a remarkable phenomenon." He fails to 
explain satisfactorily how this religion arose, 
or what was the secret of its power, of its ef- 
fects upon the personal character of its follow- 
ers, or of its marvellous triumph. Such an at- 
tempt would have brought him face to face 
with the divinit}^ of its Founder, the super- 
natural character of its revelation, and the re- 
generating and transforming power of its doc- 
trine. He does not present any sufficient nat- 
ural causes for such "a remarkable phenom- 
enon," because there were no sufficient natural 
causes discoverable. Heathenism and infidelity 
record the historic facts of Christianity, but are 
alike speechless in their presence, and power- 
less to account for them. To speak, to speak 
reasonably and intelligently, would be to re- 
nounce their heathenism and infidelity, and 



8o WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

confess the divinity of Christ and his religion. 

11. We pass now to a consideration, which 
will be necessarily very brief, of the testimony 
found in numerous writers to the early exist- 
ence and contents of the books of the New Tes- 
tament. It has already been remarked that 
there are in these books many allusions, per- 
sonal, historical and geographical, which fix 
the dates of these writings beyond a reasonable 
doubt, and in some instances the country also 
in which they were composed. If Renan found 
in his visit to Judea "a fifth Gospel," it was be- 
cause the four Gospels had taken their distinc- 
tive tone and color from the unchangeable fea- 
tures of the holy land in which they were writ- 
ten. 

But our attention is directed now, not to the 
internal evidence, but to the external or his- 
torical evidence in favor of the New Testament 
Scriptures. An eminent American author, 
writing upon the evidences of Christianity, has 
said: "The books of the New Testament are 
quoted or alluded to by a series of writers who 
may be followed up in unbroken succession 
from the present age to that of the apostles." 
The accuracy of this statement as applicable to 



The VOICE of HISTORY 8i 

the centuries of the Christian era since the 
fourth century no one would dream of calling 
in question. ^'Whoever has the least acquain- 
tance with the civilized world, as far upward as 
the fourth centur}^, must know that the ac- 
knowledgment of the New Testament, as com- 
posed of authentic writings, is interwoven with 
all the literature, science, and political as well 
as religious institutions of every subsequent 
age." 

The history of what are called civilized na- 
tions for fifteen hundred years has been to some 
extent Christian history ; that is, a history that 
has been perceptibly affected by a religious faith 
which has been created by certain religious 
writings which compose the New Testament, 
and has been nourished and strengthened by 
them. These nations constitute what is sig- 
nificantly denominated Christendom, a large 
section of the earth's surface which has been, 
in some degree, Christianized, Christ-ened, 
brought under the influence of that supreme 
Personality, whose birth and life and death are 
recorded, and whose doctrinal teachings are 
unfolded, in the Christian Scriptures. 

The testimony of the numerous Christian 



82 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

writers of the first four centuries to the exist- 
ence and contents of the books of the New Tes- 
tament might properly be adduced here. It is 
overwhelmingly conclusive. We shall do little 
more than mention their names. In the fourth 
centur}^ there were Augustine, Rufinus, Jerome, 
Gregor}^, Athanasius, Lactantius, Hilary, Cyril 
and Eusebius. In the third century there were 
Origen, Cyprian, Gregory of Neo-Csesarea and 
Dionysius. In the second century there were 
Tertullian, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Clement 
of Alexandria, and Papias. And in the church 
of the first century there were at least five 
writers, who, because they were contemporary 
with the apostles, are usually denominated 
''Apostolic Fathers," viz. : Barnabas, Clement, 
Hermas, Polycarp and Ignatius, some of whom 
are mentioned by name in the books of the New 
Testament, and must have enjoyed intimate 
association with their writers. One of them 
is positively known to have been an immediate 
disciple of the Apostle John, viz. : Polycarp. 

In these early writings we find the catalogue 
of the New Testament books exactly as we 
have them now. All of them make constant 
reference to them, and quote from them so 



r/i^ VOICE 0/ HISTORY 83 

copiously, that it has been truthfully said that 
should the New Testament be destroyed, it 
would be possible from these accurate and 
abundant quotations to restore it again sub- 
stantially and in all essential points as we have 
it in our hands to-day. It should be added that 
they all speak of these New Testament records 
as trustworthy history, with no slightest inti- 
mation that they contained anything mythical 
or legendary. Indeed, they take us back to the 
very time of the writers of the New Testament, 
and into the very presence of the men who tes- 
tified to what they had seen and heard from 
the lips of Jesus Christ, so that evidently there 
was no lapse of time sufficient for the slow 
growth of legends and myths and imaginary 
accretions to the original facts and truths of 
veritable history. 

There was also the pagan writer Celsus, 
who is known as the first great opponent of 
Christianity and a powerful controversialist. 
He is believed to have lived during the second 
century of the Christian era, certainly before 
the time of Origen, who lived in the third cen- 
tury, and through whom and his famous reply 
we are made acquainted with Celsus and with 



84 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

the nature of his assaults upon the Christian 
faith. The production of Celsus perished, no 
copy of it remaining, and later generations 
would have know nothing of it, had it not been 
preserved to them, in part, in the reply of his 
Christian opponent, the defender of the faith, 
whom God raised up for an evident purpose. 

A distinguished Scotch Biblical scholar of 
our day has said: "Now, it so happens that 
out of the materials contained in the parts of 
his writings that have been preserved by Ori- 
gen, an abridgment of the Life of Christ might 
be constructed, and, indeed we may say, has 
been constructed by more writers than one." 
One author records the boast of Celsus, that he 
was thoroughly acquainted with the Scriptures, 
and adds : ''He had evidently read the books 
of Moses, and perhaps all the other books of 
the Old Testament, and, as it appears, all the 
books of the New Testament," although he 
aimed his assault against the historical books, 
especially the biographies of Christ. Dr. Dodd- 
ridge says : "There are in Celsus about eighty 
quotations from the books of the New Testa- 
ment, or references to them, of which Origen 
has taken notice." He alluded to Christ's com- 



The VOICE of HISTORY 85 

passionate treatment of sinners, for the purpose 
of condeming what, in the eyes of Christen- 
dom, was Christ's crowning glory and God- 
Hke excellence. Whenever he could treat ma- 
liciously or misinterpret Christ's conduct or 
words, he did not hesitate to do so. He charged 
Christ's biographers with falsifying in some 
instances ; but he made no specifications, and on 
the whole treated the records as actual history, 
and made them, as they stand, the object of his 
hostile criticism, and the ground of his repudia- 
tion of the Christian religion. He became un- 
wittingly a valuable witness to the genuineness 
of the Scriptures which he sought to destroy, 
and furnished one of many illustrations, in 
which God has "caused the wrath of man to 
praise him." 

Such is a very general and incomplete pres- 
entation of the evidence of history in favor of 
Christianity, and the records in which it is de- 
posited. If Christ could affirm of the Old Tes- 
tament Scriptures, "These are they which tes- 
tify of me," still more emphatically may it be 
affirmed that the New Testament Scriptures 
bear indubitable testimony to the actual facts 
of the life and to the teachings of Jesus of Na- 



86 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

zareth, the Saviour of the world. To dispute 
the Christian records is to call in question a 
great body of contemporaneous history, written 
by enemies as well as friends, of whose honesty 
as historians there is no ground for suspicion, 
but the strongest argument in favor. 

The language of Goethe is substantiated by 
the known facts. "The mighty power of these 
books and their accounts has been tested and 
proved. They have overcome Paganism ; they 
have conquered Greece, Rome and barbarous 
Europe ; they are on the way of conquering the 
world. And the sincerity of the authors is no 
less certain than the power of the books. We 
may contest the learning and critical sagacity 
of the first historians of Jesus Christ ; but it is 
impossible to contest their good faith. It shines 
from their words ; they believed what they said ; 
they sealed their assertions with their blood." 



THE WITNESS OF THE 
BIBLE ITSELF 



"For the prophecy came not in old time by the 
will of man; but holy men of God spake as they 
were moved by the Holy Ghost" (11. Peter 
1 :2i.) 



CHAPTER III. 

THE WITNESS OE THE BIBLE ITSELI^. 

The Apostle Peter, in the second letter 
ascribed to him, makes the following distinct 
declaration: "For the prophecy came not in 
old time by the will of man; but holy men of 
God spake as they were moved by the Holy 
Ghost." The revised version of this remark- 
able verse is slightly different, as follows: 
"For no prophecy ever came by the will of 
man; but men spake from God, being moved 
by the Holy Ghost." Dean Alford has pre- 
sented still another translation in the words : 
"For prophecy was never sent after the will of 
man; but men had utterance from God, being 
moved by the Holy Spirit." 

These slightly varying versions serve to 
bring out more clearly the important truth 
stated by the writer, that the prophetic Scrip- 
ture is not of human, but of divine, origin ; that 
it is not the expression of the unaided thought 



90 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

and the uncontrolled will of man, but it is the 
thought of God, finding expression through 
human lips indeed, but lips which were under 
the guidance and inspiration of the Divine 
Spirit. "Holy men of God'' (men who were 
chosen by God for the purpose, and whose 
spirits were brought into subjection to his Holy 
Spirit) "spake as they were moved" (borne 
along, carried onward, as a ship by the wind) 
"by the Holy Ghost" ; that is, as they were im- 
pelled by the breath of the Almighty. 

This declaration has reference, of course, to 
the Old Testament Scriptures. But whoever is 
persuaded of the doctrine of inspiration with 
reference to the earlier part of the Bible, will 
have no hesitation in accepting it as applicable 
to the New Testament, to the writers of which 
Christ promised the presence and aid of the 
same Holy Spirit to guide them "into all the 
truth." 

A revelation having such an origin, and 
given in such a manner, would be expected to 
bear upon it some distinguishing marks, to 
have about it certain discoverable evidences of 
its supernatural character. What are some of 
the evidences found in the Bible itself in favor 



The WITNESS of the BIBLE Itself 91 

of its claims to be of divine origin, and which 
make it worthy of the faith which intelligent 
men have reposed in it for eighteen hundred 
years ? 

A distinction is sometimes made between the 
inspiration of the Bible and the inspiration of 
the men who wrote the Bible. It is said that it 
was the writers who were inspired, and not the 
writings. This distinction has been insisted 
upon sometimes for the purpose of denying to 
the Scriptures any special divine character and 
authority. This seems very much like a dis- 
tinction without a difference, when we consider 
its practical bearing upon the trustworthiness 
of the contents of the Sacred Volume. If the 
men themselves who wrote, whether history, or 
prophecy, or doctrine, were truly under the in- 
fluence of the Divine Spirit, the products of 
their pens must show the evidences of that in- 
fluence. A divinely inspired man must give 
utterance to a divinely inspired message, especi- 
ally when the very object of his inspiration 
was the delivery of the message he was to utter. 

Inspiration is not revelation, though the two 
may go together, and undoubtedly often do. 
But it is divine guidance and superintendence 



92 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

in the expression of truth for great moral ends, 
whatever may be the kind of truth, so that what 
is expressed shall be truth and not error, and 
therefore shall be worthy of confidence. There 
will, of course, remain the human element, by 
which is meant not the admixture of error in 
the original composition, but the personal char- 
acteristics of the writers in style and mode of 
expression. The writers of the books of the 
Bible were not machines, mere phonographs to 
give out exactly words and phrases and tones 
which had been taken in. Moses and Isaiah, 
Paul and John, were unlike, and their unlike- 
ness appears in their written productions; but 
it did not prevent them from being "moved by 
the Holy Ghost," and expressing the truths 
which the Spirit of God wished to communi- 
cate to men. 

Again, it has been said that the Bible was 
not intended to teach historic truth and scien- 
tific truth, and that it is to be accepted as au- 
thority only in matters of morals and religion. 
It is true that the phenomena of nature, when 
referred to, are described in the popular lan- 
guage of the time, as they are to-day, and not 
in the language of exact science. We speak of 



The WITNESS of the BIBLE Itself 93 

the rising and the setting of the sun, though 
we know better, without any fear of being 
charged with falsehood or inaccuracy of state- 
ment. Another has said : ''A revelation from 
God in our human language must use the 
modes of speech, scientific, literary and even 
religious, which men commonly employ at the 
time when its writers are living. It can do 
nothing else. The attempt to do otherwise 
would awaken suspicion." 

It is also true that the primary aim of the 
Bible is to unfold the moral character of God, 
his perfect attributes, his righteous standard of 
life, and his purpose of redemption for lost men 
who have come short of that perfect standard. 
But that unfolding has been in connection with 
human history, and goes back to the origin of 
man and the creation of the world. It could 
hardly fail to weaken faith in the Word of God 
as the product of divinely inspired men if it 
were discovered to be full of myths and legends, 
presented as facts, and of historical inaccur- 
acies (making necessary allowance, of course, 
for errors of transcription), and if, when it 
speaks upon scientific matters, it should utter 
clearly and positively teachings which are 



94 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

found to be contradicted by the established dis- 
coveries of advancing science. The newly dis- 
covered facts of science, which are proved to 
be facts, may compel us to modify our fallible 
interpretations of the Scriptures, as, for in- 
stance, in reference to the length of the creative 
day. That is now commonly regarded as a 
period of indefinite duration, or else the first 
chapter of Genesis is interpreted pictorially, the 
account of the creation being given as it would 
have appeared to an eye-witness. Either inter- 
pretation is allowable, and keeps the record in 
harmony with scientific facts. Mr. Gladstone 
thinks the "days" may be properly described as 
"chapters in the history of creation," and pre- 
sents very plausible arguments for his opinion. 
"God's works and God's word," if they have 
proceeded from the same hand, cannot be con- 
tradictory. They must be, so far as they touch 
upon the same themes, the harmonious revela- 
tions of the Infinite Mind. That they have 
been made to appear contradictory is explained 
by Principal Dawson in these words: "One 
fruitful cause of dif^culty in the relation of 
science and religion is to be found in the nar- 
rowness and incapacity of well-meaning Chris- 



The WITNESS of the BIBLE Itself 95 

tians, who unnecessarily bring the doctrines of 
natural and revealed religion into conflict, by 
misunderstanding the one or the other, or by 
attaching obsolete scientific ideas to Holy Scrip- 
ture, and identifying them with it in points 
where it is quite non-committal. Much mis- 
chief is also done by a prevalent habit of speak- 
ing of all, or nearly all, the votaries of science 
as if they were irreligious. A second cause is 
to be found in the extravagant speculations in- 
dulged in by the adherents of certain phil- 
osophical systems. Such speculations often 
far overpass the limits of actual scientific 
knowledge, and are yet paraded before the 
ignorant as if they were legitimate results of 
science, and so become irretrievably confounded 
with it in the popular mind." 

The facts of ethnology, which is a science of 
recent date, have been found to be in wonderful 
harmony with the Word of God. An eminent 
professor in an English university has declared : 
"There is no document in the world that con- 
tains so much information as to early human 
races as the tenth chapter of Genesis." The 
same harmony can be af^rmed of the facts of 
geology. The story of the creation, the intro- 



96 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

duction of cosmic light preceding the forma- 
tion of sun and stars, and the distinct steps in 
the orderly process from the appearance of 
vegetable life to the appearance of human life, 
which was the crowning act of creative energy, 
are in remarkable accord with the accepted de- 
liverances of science. Says Professor Silliman : 
"Every great feature in the structure of the 
planet corresponds with the order of events nar- 
rated in the sacred history." It needs to be 
borne in mind that the aim of the story of the 
creation was not scientific at all, but moral and 
spiritual, viz. : to show the exalted place of 
man in the creation, to furnish a never-to-be- 
forgotten basis for the institution of the Sab- 
bath, and to proclaim to the world a pure mono- 
theism, and the priority of God, the infinite 
Spirit, the beneficent Creator, over all forms of 
matter and orders of life. The story was told 
in a way to impress most deeply these great 
truths upon the minds of the race, without 
special regard to scientific detail. To accom- 
plish this end it might not have been necessary 
to observe even the general order of creation. 
Yet the fact that it is observed in the story may 
well excite our wonder and arouse our inquiry. 



The WITNESS of the BIBLE Itself 97 

When this spiritual aim is borne in mind, the 
first chapter of Genesis will be seen tO' be the 
sublimest utterance in human language. 

Dr. Charles W. Shields, in "The Scientific 
Evidences of Revealed Religion/' says : "Here 
in this oldest of books is an order of creation 
which modern geology verifies, and based upon 
it is a calendar of historic time which has sup- 
planted successively the calendars of Egypt, 
Assyria, Greece and Rome, which still rules the 
highest civilization of our day, and which gov- 
erns every week of your life and mine." 

The record is absolutely free from the in- 
harmonies, the puerilities, the absurdities of 
other nations. It is graphic, dignified, theistic, 
sublime, and antedated the formulated teach- 
ings of science by thousands of years. What 
is the explanation of this remarkable phenom- 
enon ? How could a man, unaided by the Spirit 
of the Creator himself, have written such an 
accurate outline of the geologic history of the 
universe at that early period of human devel- 
opment ? 

Another has said: "How came the writer 
of this account by such a doctrine of the origin 
of things ? Here is a phenomenon in literature, 



98 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

in the history of the human mind, that the skep- 
tic must account for. Moses knew nothing of 
geolog}^; perhaps he did not even apprehend 
the full m^eaning of that which he recorded as 
a vision of the six days. How came it to pass 
that, in that far antiquity, he laid down a basis 
of the creation which is in such wondrous har- 
mony with that which science now reveals? 
. . . How was it that he avoided the errors 
and extravangancies of other systems, and gave 
with such severe simplicity a description of the 
creation, which for popular uses no rhetoric 
could improve and no science gainsay ? It will 
not meet this question to bring down the date 
of the composition of Genesis, as Ewald pro- 
poses, to the time of Solomon, for the physical 
history of the globe, as now deciphered by 
geology, was not comprehended in the wisdom 
of Solomon, and the record that lay hidden in 
the rocks was no more suspected then than 
when Moses wandered in the rocky wilderness 
of Sinai. Besides, at that period, we find no 
improvement in the prevalent conception of the 
origin of the universe; but comparing the nar- 
rative in Genesis with the cosmogony of 
Homier and Hesiod, we are still compelled to 



The WITNESS of the BIBLE Itself 99 

ask, whence came that unique, exact, sublime 
account of the creation contained in this book?'^ 
It was in view of the marvellous agreement 
between the results of scientific investigation 
and the ancient Scriptures of our faith that 
Professor Dana exclaimed: ''The grand old 
book of God still stands, and this old earth, the 
more its leaves are turned over and pondered, 
the more it will sustain and illustrate the Sacred 
Word." We may quote again from Prof. 
Charles W. Shields: "Only the young and 
crude sciences wrangling among themselves 
are at seeming variance with the Scripture. 
The older, more complete sciences are already 
in growing accord with it. . . . When the 
chief authorities in any science are found fav- 
oring such harmony; when its established 
truths already illustrate it, and its hypotheses 
can be hopefully adjusted toward it; and when 
all the sciences are seen taking this general di- 
rection according to their different stages of 
advancement, we gain new evidence of revela- 
tion, the highest, perhaps, that can be afforded. 
It is science itself becoming an unwitting, and 
sometimes an unwilling, witness at the bar of 
OtntJi^ience. It is evidence which is strictly 



loo WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

scientific in its logical quality and force, since 
it is derived from the facts of nature, as agree- 
ing with the truths of Scripture. In this age of 
arts and sciences it is as timely as the evidence 
yielded in the age of miracles and prophecies. 
It meets the modern scientist seeking wisdom, 
as that evidence met the ancient Jew requiring 
a sign." 

This brief reference to a subject on which 
volumes have been written, is all that our plan 
will permit. 

We pass now to suggest some of the charac- 
teristics of the Bible which go to establish its 
divine origin. 

(I). The first characteristic which we 
name, which has been generally acknowledged, 
and which all critical study confirms, is its sig- 
nificant unity. The Bible is composed of many 
parts ; indeed, it is not a book, but a library. It 
was written in different languages, by many 
different men of different temperaments, in 
places widely separated, and in ages remote 
from each other, covering a period of fifteen 
hundred years. These parts appeared at differ- 
ent periods of the world's civilization, and at 
different centres of thought and culture, in 



The WITNESS of the BIBLE Itself loi 

Syria, in Macedonia, in Greece, and in Italy. 
This last fact cannot be too strongly empha- 
sized. A literature partakes uniformly of the 
characteristics of the time in which it is pro- 
duced; a philosophy discloses traces of the 
national traits amid which it is born. Yet, 
through all the books of the Bible, there are 
manifest a singular tmity of purpose, oneness 
of spirit, and resemblance of thought which 
seem to point conclusively to a single guiding 
and superintending mind. 

There is confessedly progress in the unfold- 
ing of truth, the Old Testament preceding the 
New, not only in point of time, but as the dawn- 
ing of the morning precedes the noonday, as 
prophecy precedes the fulfilment. There were 
preparatory stages, made necessary in the 
judgment of God by human conditions, and by 
the nature of the truth tO' be unfolded. One 
reason for the late advent of Jesus Christ was 
that the world might have full proof of the in- 
sufficiency of its wisdom for the regeneration 
and salvation of men, for their emancipation 
from ignorance and sin. Christ came in the 
fulness of time. "For after that in the wisdom 
of God (that is, by the wise arrangement of 



I02 WHY zve BELIEA'E the BIBLE 

God in the predetermined delay) the world by 
its wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the 
foolishness of preaching (the Gospel) to save 
them that believe.'' And even when Christ had 
come, he revealed his truth to his disciples only 
as they were able to bear it. There was prog- 
ress of doctrine, the gradual development of 
truth, not only in the passing from the Jewish 
to the Christian Scriptures, but in the Christian 
Scriptures themselves. But truth in the early 
stages was not as incomplete as some men are 
wont to think, and truth in its final revelation 
has left nothing to be desired. 

But development is not contradiction. 
Through it all there is the unity of an unfold- 
ing life, the expression of a supreme purpose, 
the presence of a guiding Spirit speaking 
through different lips and many pens, and bind- 
ing all together, history, psalm, prophecy, bi- 
ography and epistle into one consistent, homo- 
geneous book. It is certainly a marvel in litera- 
ture, and can be accounted for only upon the 
supposition of the operation of a single enlight- 
ening and controlling divine Spirit. 

"Whence but from heaven could men unskilled in arts, 
In several ages bom. in several parts, 
Weave such agreeing truths?" 



The WITNESS of the BIBLE Itself 103 

(II). A second characteristic of the Bible 
which bears witness to its divine origin is its 
exalted doctrine of God. Nowhere among the 
sacred books or beliefs of other nations can be 
found such a conception of Deity as in the Bible, 
so pure, SO' holy, so loving, so spiritual, so 
worthy of the worship of intelligent moral 
beings, so perfect in all his attributes and so 
infinite in all his perfections. It is utterly un- 
like the gross, cruel, immoral, semi-human and 
semi-fiendish pictures of the gods of all other 
nations. How did it happen that the God of 
the Jews stood in such striking contrast with 
the gods of all their neighbors, Egyptians, As- 
syrians, Babylonians, and even with the gods 
of cultured Greece and imperial Rome, as well 
as with the gods of the aboriginal inhabitants 
of all lands ? It is obviously irrational to sup- 
pose that it was an evolution working up from 
animism through spiritism, polytheism, and 
various forms of idolatry, until at last it 
reached a pure monotheistic faith ; for the tend- 
ency of religion among the Jews, as among 
other peoples, was always to work down in- 
stead of working up, and to lapse into open 
idolotry and ever grosser conceptions of Deity, 



104 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

a tendency which was overcome only by con- 
stant divine interpositions. Ethnic reUgions 
do not purify themselves. The reverse is true. 
The history of the Jewish nation furnishes a 
conspicuous illustration of the degenerating 
force which is ever active in national and per- 
sonal life, in religious beliefs and in moral prin- 
ciples, and which is not always successfully re- 
sisted by an authoritative revelation and a di- 
vinely prescribed standard of righteousness. 

The opinions of men are divided to-day as 
to whether heathen religions are steps forward 
or steps backward, evidences of the religious 
nature of man reaching out after a higher con- 
ception of God than it has attained, or satisfy- 
ing itself with a low and degrading conception 
of Deity to which it has fallen. The apostle 
Paul found it necessary to utter himself dis- 
tinctly and at some length on this question. 
^'Because that when they knew God, they glori- 
fied him not as God, neither were thankful ; but 
became vain in their imaginations, and their 
foolish heart was darkened. Professing them- 
selves to be wise, they became fools, and 
changed the glory of the uncorruptible God 
into an image made like to corruptible man, 



The WITNESS of the BIBLE Itself 105 

and to birds, and four-footed beasts and creep- 
ing things." That is the inspired apostle's in- 
terpretation of the origin of atheism and idol- 
atry. In his judgment they were departures 
from a purer primitive faith. 

Undoubtedly the conception of God under 
the teaching of Christ was enlarged and en- 
riched; but in the Old Testament it was pecu- 
liarly lofty and spiritual, and far surpassed the 
teachings of other religions in this respect, as 
the study of comparative religion abundantly 
proves. Take the very first utterance of the 
book of Genesis, and notice how wonderfully 
comprehensive and sublime it is. "In the be- 
ginning God created the heaven and the earth." 
"This simple sentence," says Dr. J. G. Murphy, 
"denies atheism, for it assumes the being of 
God. It denies polytheism, and among its 
various forms, the doctrine of two eternal 
principles, the one good and the other evil, for 
it confesses the one Eternal Creator. It denies 
materialism, for it asserts the creation of mat- 
ter. It denies pantheism, for it assumes the ex- 
istence of God before all things, and apart from 
them. It denies fatalism, for it involves the 
freedom of the Eternal Being." 



io6 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

Who taught this great teacher and historian 
of the Jewish people? How happened it that 
he stood alone, among founders of religious 
systems, in giving utterance to this exalted and 
pre-eminently spiritual doctrine of God, a doc- 
trine which his Jewish successors in the 
prophetic office clothed with all wisdom, right- 
eousness, mercy and truth? Even the Old 
Testament contains, at least in germ, every 
conception of God which the New Testament 
unfolds. It is full not only of his power and 
justice, but of his gentleness and grace, in deal- 
ing with his sinning creatures ; for it says, "vis- 
iting the iniquity of the fathers upon the chil- 
dren" (which is only an old statement of the 
modern doctrine of heredity), but at the same 
time says "forgiving iniquity, transgression 
and sin." The Jewish Scriptures are not silent 
in reference to the doctrine of the divine Father- 
hood. Psalmist and prophets foreshadow the 
fuller revelation of Christ. Indeed, it may be 
said that all through the Bible there looms 
up, resplendent and attractive, the unique 
truth of God's spiritual Fatherhood, a truth 
often perverted and made the basis of unscrip- 
tural and fatal inferences, but which neverthe- 



The WITNESS of the BIBLE Itself 107 

less contains the very heart of divine revela- 
tion. 

In a word, where else are we taught, among 
the philosophies or the religions of men, that 
the infinite and holy God takes men into filial 
relations with himself, or that he is a shep- 
herd in his care, provisions and defence of those 
who trust him, or that he is "spirit" and 
"light" and "love," to use the three comprehen- 
sive and striking definitions of the Supreme 
Being, given to us by the Apostle John ? What 
is this but God's revelation of himself, his na- 
ture and his relations to men, in his inspired 
Word? Unless we acknowledge this author- 
ship of the revelation, how can we place con- 
fidence in these distinguishing truths which set 
it apart from all human literature? 

(III). In close connection with its exalted 
doctrine of God is the person and character of 
Jesus Christ, whose unique and perfect portrait 
is found in the Bible, and separates it from all 
other biographical literature. Christ is the 
purpose and glory of all revelation. The older 
books are shot through and through with the 
prophecy of his coming, and with the minute 
details of his life and manifestation on earth. 



io8 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

The Gospels contain the marvellous stories, un- 
like, yet consistent and complemental, of his 
striking personality, his miraculous birth, his 
sinless and ideal character, his possession and 
exhibition of supernatural power, manifested 
over the forces of nature, and in the realm of 
evil spirits, his inculcation of the absolute truth 
concerning God and man, spiritual things and 
human duty and destiny, his sacrificial death 
upon the cross with its attendant miracles, and 
his glorious resurrection and ascension to 
heaven. It has been truly said that the fabrica- 
tion of such a character and life would be as 
great a miracle as the fact of their actual ex- 
istence. The later books of the New Testa- 
ment, subsequent to the Gospels, contain the 
brief record of the early struggles, persecutions 
and triumphs of Christianity among both Jews 
and Gentiles, and the harmonious unfolding, 
and, when we consider the persons who wrote 
the books, the remarkable unfolding, of the 
teachings of Christ in doctrine and precept. 
All revelation seems to have had for its su- 
preme object the getting of Christ before the 
eyes of men and into the faiths of men. 

Christ, the subject of numerous and indis- 



The WITNESS of the BIBLE Itself 109 

putable prophecies; Christ as a remarkable 
phenomenon in human history, his birth, life, 
death and resurrection being outside of the 
customary order of nature; Christ the ideal 
person, the typical man, and therefore, as an- 
other has said, "King of men," claiming at the 
same time to be "The Son of God" in a unique 
sense, so that he is "the only begotten Son of 
God" ; Christ the teacher sent from God, the 
divinely endorsed and authoritative teacher of 
all truth in the realms of morals and religion; 
Christ the possessor and rightful wielder of all 
power in heaven and earth; Christ the volun- 
tary ransom for the lost race of men, crucified 
in their behalf, his death having relation to 
divine law and human guilt, and his blood 
cleansing from all sin; Christ raised from 
actual death, and by that act "declared to be 
the Son of God with power," and now living 
at the right hand of God to make intercession 
for his followers — this is the extraordinary 
picture that confronts us in the Scriptures, and 
sheds its light and its glory over the whole 
body of revealed truth. And this picture 
has made the impression of truthfulness, of 
reality, of superhumanity upon most intelli- 



I lo WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

gent minds in all the Christian centuries, and 
upon most acute thinkers and writers in the 
realms of philosophy, science, morals and re- 
ligion. 

Christ, as portrayed in the Bible, is above all 
suspicion of self-deception or imposture. His 
integrity is unimpeachable. His character and 
life are spotless. He is transparent truthful- 
ness in thought and word and deed. When he 
claims to be ''the way, the truth and the life," 
and the adequate manifestation of God to men, 
the whole world bows in unquestioning assent. 
Confessions innumerable, and from every quar- 
ter, might be cited as to the impression of his 
superhuman character and influence. Two or 
three must suffice, and these will be by men not 
likely to be accused of extravagant eulogy of 
the person of Christ. It was Channing who 
said, in a sermon on "The Inimitableness of 
Christ" : "I believe Jesus Christ to be more 
than a human being. In truth, all Christians 
so believe him." Again he said : "He was 
what he claimed to be, and what his followers 
attested. Nor is this all. Jesus not only was, 
he is still, the Son of God, the Saviour of the 
world." It was Richter who said of Christ: 



The WITNESS of the BIBLE Itself 1 1 1 

"He is the purest among the mighty, the 
mightiest among the pure, who> with his pierced 
hands, has raised empires from their founda- 
tions, turned the stream of history from its old 
channel, and still continues to rule and guide 
the ages." It was Herder who said: "Jesus 
must be looked upon as the first real fountain 
of purity, freedom and salvation to the world." 
The familiar words of Rousseau, taken from 
his "Emile," are: "Yes, if the life and the 
death of Socrates are those of a sage, the life 
and death of Jesus are those of God." 
Charles Lamb is reported, in a company of lit- 
erary men, to have differentiated the exalted 
character of Christ from all human beings in 
this striking manner : "If Shakespeare should 
enter this room, we should all rise spontaneous- 
ly ; but if Jesus Christ should enter, we should 
all kneel." The one would receive the tribute 
due to genius; the other the homage due to 
Divinity. 

Such language reveals the admiration which 
men in all circles of thought have felt for the 
unique character of Christ, and expresses, 
whatever discount may be made on its literal 
meaning, the exceptional tribute of praise which 



1 12 WHY lije BELIEVE the BIBLE 

they have been constrained to give to the in- 
fluence of that character upon the moral life 
of men and the histor}* of nations. The point 
made here is this — a book that contains the 
portrait and teachings of such a Person, bears 
upon its face irresistible evidence that it is of 
more than human origin. So long as the Bible 
has Jesus Christ in it, it must be believed to 
be from God. 

(IV) . A fourth characteristic of the Sacred 
Scriptures, that lifts them out of the range of 
purely himian literature, and confirms the be- 
lief that "holy men of God spake as they were 
moved by the Holy Ghost" is the presence in 
them of prophecy, a large amotmt of which is 
known to have been fulfilled. Prophecy is 
the foretelling of future events ; it may be years 
or centuries before they come to pass. Xot all 
prophets were prophets in this sense. Some 
were simply preachers of righteousness. The 
utterance of prophecy may seem to be the wild 
imagining of a fer^dd mind, and for years may 
have no evidential value. The fulfilment of 
prophecy makes it complete, and converts it 
into real and valid testimony, and proves con- 
clusively that the prophet was speaking under 



The WITNESS of the BIBLE Itself 1 13 

the illumination of the Divine Spirit, that he 
was endowed with a prescience that must have 
been imparted to him by God. Fulfilled 
prophecy is evidence of the strongest kind ; in- 
deed, it is absolutely incontrovertible as to the 
origin of its inspired utterance. 

Moreover, it is evidence that is accessible to 
all, that is addressed to the senses, that is visible 
to the eyes, that is open to examination, that is 
verifiable by ordinary men. We must deny the 
reality of the prophetic utterance, and refuse 
to believe that it was spoken at the date speci- 
fied, and bring it forward to a time posterior 
to the supposed fulfilment and conform it to the 
occurrence in its details, and then declare that 
a prior date has been fraudulently given to it 
(this is what is being attempted with not a few 
of the prophecies of the Old Testament), or 
we must admit the supernatural element in it, 
and acknowledge that God himself has spoken 
by the mouth of his servant. 

The weight of the evidence from prophecy, 
and the important place which it holds in the 
argument for the divine origin of the Bible, can 
be appreciated by those only who have made 
themselves familiar by careful and prolonged 



1 14 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

study with its abundance, and with the wide 
and varied scope of its application. The sub- 
ject can be treated here only in barest outline 
and the most general manner. 

These Biblical prophecies which have been 
accurately and unquestionably fulfilled, refer 
not only to the Jews, among whom they were 
spoken, but to other contemporary peoples, 
cities and empires, to Babylon, and Tyre, and 
Egypt, to the empires of Chaldea, Persia, Ma- 
cedonia and Rome, as well as to the cities of 
Judea and the future of the Jews, prophecies 
not equivocal and uncertain and mysterious, 
like a Delphic oracle, but clear and positive in 
utterance and minute in detail, and which were 
fulfilled with astonishing accuracy in all par- 
ticulars. To read them now after the events 
foretold seems like the reading of veritable his- 
tory. 

Reference has already been made to the fact 
that Christ was the subject of much prophecy. 
There are not less than three hundred distinct 
predictions, scattered from Genesis to Malachi, 
giving the particulars of the time, place and 
circumstances of his nativity, of his life, 
sufferings, death and resurrection, of his per- 



The WITNESS of the BIBLE Itself 1 1 5 

sonal character and the purpose of his mission 
on earth, as well as the nature and extent of 
his dominion. All this is told with a fulness 
and definiteness which leave no room for doubt 
that the brilliant prophetic rays were focused 
on him. Christ himself and his apostles con- 
stantly acknowledged the meaning of the an- 
cient prophecies, and recognized their actual, 
living fulfilment in him. The New Testament 
narrative is frequently punctuated by the re- 
frain: "That it might be fulfilled which was 
spoken by the prophet." 

Moreover, Christ was the author as well as 
the subject of many prophecies. By prophecy, 
as well as by miracle, he established his divine 
character and mission. He predicted his own 
betrayal and death and resurrection, the com- 
ing of false Christs, the persecution of his dis- 
ciples, the overthrow of Jerusalem when as yet 
there was no sign of the coming storm, explain- 
ing in graphic outline the method of its siege, 
the unparalleled tribulation of the inhabitants, 
and the complete destruction of the city and 
temple, so that one stone should not be left 
upon another, and also the dispersion of the 
Jews among all nations. All of these events 



1 16 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

have literally come to pass in the eyes of the 
whole world. 

These are some of the many themes on which 
the spirit of prophecy spoke, and these are the 
many and indubitable evidences that it was the 
foreseeing God who spoke in his Scriptures, 
and foretold the coming of his Son to earth, 
and outlined the future of nations, of cities and 
of men. 

(V). One more characteristic of the Bible 
which is proof of its high origin must have 
mention here, viz. : the excellence and superior- 
ity of its ethical teachings. The whole Bible 
is noticeably pervaded with a pure moral tone 
from beginning to end, and an ethical doctrine 
so clear, and positive, and unmistakable that 
the Christian standard of morality has been 
accepted as the highest standard of the moral 
nature of man, and the most perfect expression 
of the moral nature of God. The Bible in its 
record of human history and biography gives 
impartially the record of national and personal 
sin, even among God's chosen people and in 
the conspicuous cases of his professed follow- 
ers, but never in a way to approve of immo- 
rality or condone wrongdoing. It offers par- 



The WITNESS of the BIBLE Itself 117 

don and peace with God to sinful men, however 
wicked, but always upon condition of repent- 
ance, godly sorrow and genuine reformation. 
Whatever may be said of the necessity of moral 
education and progress in ethical training in 
the early ages, and the accommodation of 
moral teaching to the ignorance and hardness 
of men's hearts, subjects which it is not neces- 
sary here to discuss, the ideal of righteousness 
was never obscured. Men were to be holy as 
God is holy, and the whole aim of revelation 
was to make sin repulsive and odious, and to 
commend virtue and clothe it with an irresist- 
ible beauty and attractiveness. 

Moreover, the morality of the Bible is not a 
mere negative or superficial morality, like the 
morality approved by the world and inculcated 
by other religions, but a positive, heart-search- 
ing, active morality, which consists not only 
of prohibitions, but of commandments, not 
only of "Thou shalt nots," but of "Thou 
shalts." It recognizes the fact that all sin is 
disobedience to God and is moral defilement. 
"Against thee, thee only I have sinned, and 
done this evil in thy sight." "Purge me with 
hyssop and I shall be clean." It requires not 



1 18 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

only outward obedience but inward purity. 
He that is angry against his brother, and 
cherishes kist in his heart, is guilty of murder 
and adultery. It demands not only abstinence 
from all evil, but the cheerful and perpetual 
doing of good. "Thou shalt love the Lord 
thy God w4th all thy heart, and thy neighbor 
as thyself." 

The moral teaching of the Bible, could it 
have supreme and universal sway, would make 
absolutely perfect the life of man, of the fam- 
ily and of society. The Bible teaches not only 
by precept, but by living example as well. It 
presents not only a code, but a life ; the perfect 
code illustrated in the perfect life. Let that 
code be illustrated in the lives of men to-day, 
and the result would be the same. Man would 
be morally perfect in himself, and perfect in all 
his relations. This high, this ideal, this perfect 
ethical standard is not only claimed for the 
Bible by Christian teachers, but is accorded to 
it by moralists, philosophers and infidels. 
Franklin said: "I think Christ's system of 
morals and religion, as he left them to us, the 
best the world ever saw, or is ever likely to see." 
Matthew Arnold said : "The true God is, and 



The WITNESS of the BIBLE Itself 1 19 

must be, pre-eminently the God of the Bible, 
the Eternal who makes for righteousness." 
John Stuart Mill called Christ "the ideal repre- 
sentative and guide of humanity." Rousseau 
asked: "Where could Jesus learn among his 
compatriots that pure and sublime morality 
of which he only hath given us both precept 
and example"? Where, we repeat, except as 
he and his Father were one, and the morality 
of the Bible, of which Christ's teaching was a 
consistent part, and Christ's life a beautiful 
illustration, was the expression, under the in- 
spiration of the divine Spirit, of the moral 
nature of God ? 

There are other characteristics of the Bible, 
which bear witness to its divine origin and char- 
acter; as, for example, its accurate portraiture 
of man, his origin and moral condition, the 
adaptability of the Gospel to human needs, and 
its authoritative revelation of immortality. 
These topics may properly receive considera- 
tion in a chapter which follows this, entitled, 
"The Testimony from Christian Experience." 
But whoever carefully reflects upon the points 
which have been presented in this chapter, viz. : 
the unity of the Sacred Scriptures, the trans- 



I20 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

cendent doctrine of God revealed in them, the 
marvellous person and life of Jesus Christ, the 
existence of numerous remarkable prophecies 
and their literal fulfilment, and the moral teach- 
ing of this venerable Book, the most recent 
parts of which are nearly two thousand years 
old, and yet which human society with all its 
enlightenment and progress has not attained 
unto, and can never expect to outgrow, will 
find it impossible to believe that this Book is 
of human origin, but will, on the other hand, 
reverently and gratefully acknowledge that it 
is truly the Word of God, and that in its com- 
position "holy men of God spake as they were 
moved by the Holy Ghost." 

Professor Margoliouth, Professor of Arabic 
in the University of Oxford, in his remarkably 
able and erudite volume, "Lines of Defence of 
the Biblical Revelation," in which he treats in 
a fresh and masterly manner some of the vital 
questions of Biblical criticism, for example, 
the early date of the books of the Bible, the 
genuineness of the Book of Daniel, the unity of 
the Book of Isaiah, and, in general, the divine 
origin and trustworthiness of the Hebrew 
Scriptures, in opposition to the destructive crit- 



The WITNESS of the BIBLE Itself 121 

icism of our time, proves conclusively the utter 
incompetency of the Jewish people to create 
their remarkable literature without divine in- 
spiration and guidance. After showing in the 
most striking way their complete lack of orig- 
inality and creative genius, he asks : "How are 
we to reconcile with this most patent want of 
originality the extraordinary phenomenon of 
such a race having produced a literature which, 
after having once taken its place at the head of 
the literature of the world, has no intention of 
quitting that post? The lost literatures that 
come to light rarely have any value of their 
own. Egypt and Assyria produced monu- 
ments which were long lost, but now are found 
and deciphered. Who reads them, except out 
of mere curiosity, or to aid him in some other 
study? Indian literature is now as easy of ac- 
cess as Greek, but who cares for it? One or 
two isolated morsels, perhaps, are known be- 
yond professional circles, but nothing else. 
The Bible itself explains this problem by the 
theory that the best Israelitish literature was 
communicated to its authors from without, 
that it was the result of special favors con- 
ferred on privileged members of the race. 



122 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

'Men spake as they were moved/ The nation, 
which of itself could do nothing for science or 
philosophy, which could not observe and could 
not experiment, which could not compile a 
grammar nor invent a metre, produced the 
books which, owing to the profoundity of their 
contents, 'the first man did not know fully, and 
the last man has not sounded to the bottom.' 
Truly, this is the Lord's doing, and it is mar- 
vellous in our eyes." 



THE PROOF FROM 
MIRACLES 



"Believe me that I am in the Father, and 
the Father in me; or else believe me for the very 
works' sake." (John 14: ii.) 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE PROO^ f^ROM MIRACLES. 

Matthew Arnold, in ''Literature and 
Dogma/' says of miracles : "For it is what we 
call the Time-Spirit that is sapping the proof 
from miracles — it is the 'Zeit-Geist' itself. 
Whether we attack them, or whether we de- 
fend them, does not much matter; the human 
mind, as its experience widens, is turning away 
from them. And for this reason, it sees, as its 
experience widens, how they arise. It sees 
that, under certain circumstances, they always 
do arise; and that they have not more solidity 
in one case than another. Under certain cir- 
cumstances, wherever men are found, there is, 
as Shakespeare says : — 

No natural exhalation in the sky, 

No scape of nature, no distemper'd day, 

No common wind, no customed event, 

But they will pluck away his natural cause, 

And call them meteors, prodigies, and signs. 

Abortives, presages, and tongues of heaven.' " 



126 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

Again he says in the same book and chapter, 
the title of the chapter being "The Proof from 
Miracles" : "Our point is, that the objections 
to miracles do, and more and more will, with- 
out insistence, without controversy, make their 
own force felt, and that the sanction of Chris- 
tianity, if Christianity is not to be lost along 
with its miracles, must be found elsewhere." 

Yet Mr. Arnold, in spite of his confidence 
that a belief in Christian miracles will disap- 
pear of itself, without attack, before the ad- 
vancing experience of men, feels called upon 
to make a severe and prolonged attack upon 
them, ascribing them to a legendary origin and 
"to the liability of the New Testament writers 
to make mistakes" in their records. 

Goldwin Smith, in his preface to "Guesses 
at the Riddle of Existence," asserts that "Lib- 
eral theologians have at least half resigned the 
belief in miracles, rationalizing whenever they 
can, and minimizing where that process fails. 
Liberal theologians, and even theologians by 
no means ranked as liberal, if they are learned 
and open-minded, have given up the authen- 
ticity and authority of Genesis. With these 
they must apparently give up the fall, the re- 



The PROOF from MIRACLES 127 

demption and the incarnation. After this, little 
is left of the ecclesiastical creeds for criticism 
to destroy." 

It is only necessary to call attention, in pass- 
ing, to the ungenerous and discourteous insin- 
uation, "if they are learned and open-minded," 
to which such critics allow themselves to con- 
descend. Those only are open-minded who 
agree with them. In the body of the book Mr. 
Smith expresses himself in similar language. 
"The incarnation, it will be observed, is the 
centre of this whole circle of miracles. With- 
out it they can hardly be said to have a purpose 
or a meaning. But since our rejection of the 
authenticity and authority of the Book of Gen- 
esis, the purpose and meaning of the incarna- 
tion itself have been withdrawn. If there was 
no fall of man, there can be no need of the re- 
demption. If there was no need of the redemp- 
tion, there can have been no motive for the in- 
carnation. The whole ecclesiastical scheme of 
salvation, with all its miraculous appurte- 
nances, falls to the ground." 

If this argument is true and valid, it may be 
said that the converse is also true and valid, 
viz. : if there was a fall of man, there was a 



128 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

need of redemption. If there was a need of 
redemption, there was a sufficient motive for 
the incarnation, and for "the whole circle 
of miracles," of which the incarnation is "the 
center." Therefore, the whole "scheme of sal- 
vation, with all its miraculous appurtenances," 
is unshaken. 

Mr. Smith still further adds: "The Jews 
were further prepared for the acceptance of 
fresh miracles by their traditional acceptance 
of those of the Old Testament. So devoid were 
they of any conception of natural law, or of 
anything, except a direct action of Deity, that 
with them a miracle would hardly be miracu- 
lous" — a statement utterly inconsistent with 
the profound impression which the recorded 
miracles of Christ made upon the minds of 
those who beheld them, so that they called them 
"signs and wonders and mighty deeds." 

Andrew D. White, in "A History of the 
Warfare of Science with Theology," says: 
"The world is hardly beyond the beginning of 
medical discoveries, yet they have already taken 
from theology what was formerly its strongest 
province, sweeping away from this vast field 
of human effort that belief in miracles which 



The PROOF from MIRACLES 129 

for more than twenty centuries has been the 
main stumbling-block in the path of medicine: 
and in doing this they have cleared higher 
paths not only for science, but for religion/' 
He constantly intimates throughout his elab- 
orate volumes that as science advances and as 
religion advances, there will be no room for a 
belief in the supernatural; indeed, that such a 
belief is of the nature of a primitive super- 
stition. To this conviction some prominent 
writers and interpreters of the Holy Scriptures 
have already professedly come. A denial of 
the supernatural means a rejection of miracles 
— both those of the Old Testament and those 
of the New, as having any historical or evi- 
dential value. 

Moreover, it should be said that even among 
those who still hold to a belief in miracles, it is 
sometimes held in an apologetic, timid and 
half-hearted way; the holders, as Goldwin 
Smith says, "rationalizing wherever they can, 
and minimizing where that process fails," until 
in some quarters the question of miracles is 
passed over as lightly as possible, and little or 
no emphasis is laid upon them as an essential 
part of the Christian system. In a religious 



I30 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE . . 

journal claiming to represent a large evangel- 
ical denomination of Christians, there appeared 
recently a review of John W. Chad wick's 
"Biography of Theodore Parker," in which it 
was said : ''For his (that is Parker's) share in 
the liberation of the mind from exaggerated 
and misplaced notions of the miraculous and 
the impossible doctrine of verbal inspiration, 
we may all join in a tribute of gratitude. We 
have reason to be glad that the incubus of infal- 
libility is removed from faith in the inspira- 
tion of the Scriptures, that miracles are no 
longer misused as evidences of Christianity, 
nor necessarily defined as violations of natural 
law." 

The perplexity of some minds in the treat- 
ment of miracles is manifest in the methods 
to which they resort to justify their lingering 
faith in them. A distinguished American 
clergyman and author, though disputing the 
record of some of the reported miracles of our 
Lord, still thinks that others must be accepted 
as worthy of credence. But he endeavors to 
bring them within the compass of a rational 
faith by effacing all distinction between nature 
and the supernatural. "We are coming," he 



The PROOF from MIRACLES 131 

says, "to see that there is no distinction be- 
tween the natural and the supernatural; that 
the natural is all supernatural, and that the 
supernatural is all most natural." Such lan- 
guage is the veriest quibbling, and would never 
be resorted to unless a man was ashamed of his 
little remaining faith in the supernatural ele- 
ment in Christianity, or was seeking to account 
for Christianity, its divine Person and its 
sublime teachings, by some theory of natural 
evolution. "The natural" and "the supernat- 
ural" are distinct terms with accepted and well 
understood meanings, and to wipe out the dis- 
tinction between them is to abandon the Chris- 
tian interpretation of nature in favor of the 
Pantheistic. 

The quotations which have been cited from 
the more moderate, as well as the more ad- 
vanced representatives of the school of so-called 
liberal thought, make apparent the necessity 
of a reconsideration of the place and value of 
miracles in the Christian system. This discus- 
sion will pertain not to the evidence for the 
genuineness and reality of the miracles recorded 
in the New Testament, but to the validity of 
the evidence which the miracles furnish to the 



132 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

claims of Christianity upon the faith of men 
as a divine revelation. Of course, within the 
limits of this volume the discussion can be little 
more than a suggestive outline. 

There are, in general, four ways in which 
the subject of Biblical miracles is treated. 

First, there are those who deny not only the 
reality, but the possibility, of miracles, who 
reason a priori that the world is under the reign 
and operation of natural law, that a miracle 
would be a violation of some law or laws of 
nature, and that, therefore, God could not vio- 
late a law which he had made, else he would 
repudiate his own work and reveal his own 
imperfection, and thereby dethrone himself. 
This is the purely deistic argument. There is 
an established order of things, an order estab- 
lished by God at the beginning, and with which 
it is not only unreasonable to expect that God 
will interfere but impossible that he should in- 
terfere. The modern theory of evolution, 
though it may be held theistically ; that is, 
though it may acknowledge the existence of 
God at the beginning of the visible universe, is 
by its own definition deistic in principle. It 
cannot consistently admit the introduction of 



The PROOF from MIRACLES 133 

the supernatural element for any purpose what- 
ever. It acknowledges the existence and opera- 
tion of only "resident forces." It leads logical- 
ly and inevitably to the denial of all miracles. 
There are other persons who, while not deny- 
ing the possibility of miracles, call in question 
their reality. They dispute the testimony 
which is offered in favor of them, one and all, 
and refuse to believe that any miracles have 
ever been wrought. Some so-called miracles 
are known to be spurious. They assert that 
all are such, and pronounce the record of them 
to be mythical and legendary. They have dis- 
covered "how they arise," and that "in certain 
circumstances they always do arise." And 
while they hesitate for the most part to declare 
that the writers of the New Testament records 
were guilty of intentional fraud, because such 
an accusation would be at once proved false 
by the high moral tone of their teachings, they 
profess to think it perfectly natural and rea- 
sonable that they were deceived, and fell into 
strange and fanciful errors of belief and of 
deliberate statement. Goldwin Smith uses the 
following words : "No man of comprehensive 
mind, unless it be Renan in his dealing with the 



134 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

raising of Lazarus, has taken the miracles for 
creations of fraud. They are the offspring of 
a childHke fancy in a totally uncritical age. 
They are a halo which naturally grew round 
the head of the adored Teacher and Founder, 
as it grew round the head of every mediaeval 
saint." The known critical and even skeptical 
character of Christ's disciples, and the lack of 
time requisite for such myths and legends to 
grow, before the Gospel narratives are known 
to have taken shape, seem to have but little 
weight upon the minds of these deniers of 
miracles. They find it easier and more agree- 
able to accept this interpretation of the bi- 
ographies of Christ than to believe that the 
miraculous events recorded in them actually 
took place. 

A third class of persons, while acknowledg- 
ing both the possibility and the reality of mir- 
acles, the miracles contained in the New Tes- 
tament, deny that they have any evidential 
value, that they are to be regarded as a criterion 
of revelation, that they have any weight in es- 
tablishing the divine origin and claims of Chris- 
tianity. Indeed, some persons have gone so 
far as to confess that in their judgment mir- 



The PROOF from MIRACLES 135 

acles are "the dead weights" of Christianity. 
They admit that the Bible contains the record 
of unquestioned miracles, but are free to say 
that they stand in the way of the acceptance of 
Christian truth, instead of possessing a proba- 
tive value, and that it would be better if the 
narration of the miracles had been omitted. It 
is this conviction that has led some writers to 
make the earnest and honest effort to establish 
the trustworthiness of the Christian religion 
entirely upon other grounds, and to preserve 
the Christian faith for this generation and sub- 
sequent generations in spite of the miraculous 
element in it. This disposition to pass by "the 
mighty works" of Christ, the exhibitions of 
superhuman power which were so frequent in 
his public ministry, and even to explain away 
the marvellous story of his incarnation, and the 
no less marvellous story of his resurrection, as 
if faith in these facts was not essential to the 
acceptance of Christianity, and to present ex- 
clusively the matchless personal character and 
life of Christ, his sayings, his parables, and 
the ethical beauty of the Gospels, is the result, 
in no small degree, of the tremendous influence 
of the study of the physical sciences in our day, 



136 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

of the new conception of the sovereignty of 
law, and of the demand that everything must 
be accounted for upon naturahstic and scien- 
tific principles. 

But the great body of Christians still, edu- 
cated as well as uneducated, among whom are 
many of the ablest thinkers of our time, accept 
the well-authenticated miracles of the Bible as 
one criterion of revelation, as one convincing 
argument in favor of the Christian religion. 
There are other criteria and other arguments, 
each one having its own peculiar weight and 
filling its own place in the cumulative and irre- 
sistible series of proofs for the credibility, the 
trustworthiness, the divine character of Chris- 
tianity. But it is not thought necessary, or de- 
sirable, or possible to set aside the evidential 
value of miracles. They have their place, and 
a most important place, among Christian evi- 
dences. They have been performed for great 
moral and spiritual ends. They have been in- 
corporated inseparably in the Christian system. 
They form a natural and consistent part of di- 
vine revelation, and furnish confirmatory evi- 
dence of inestimable value to the origin and 
genuineness of the message of truth which 



The PROOF from MIRACLES 137 

purports to have come to men from God. 

It is possible that in former times too great 
emphasis was laid upon this kind of evidence, 
and that other forms of evidence received too 
little attention, and that now there should be 
a change of emphasis, and the greater stress 
should be put upon the resplendent character 
of Christ, the moral excellence of the Gospel 
and its adaptability to the spiritual needs of 
men, and even upon the progress of the Gospel 
and the nature and extent of its achievements, 
all of which bear their separate and united tes- 
timony to the greatness and divinity of the 
Christian religion, a testimony which has in- 
creased in volume with the passing centuries. 
But this is not saying that the miracles which 
accompanied the introduction of Christianity 
may now be ignored, and may be safely omitted 
in a discussion of Christian evidences. 

It is undoubtedly true, as Mr. Lecky has 
said, that "there is no change in the history of 
the last three hundred years more striking or 
suggestive than that which has taken place in 
the estimate of the miraculous." But this 
change is almost exclusively limited to the in- 
terpretation of alleged modern miracles and 



138 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

surprising phenomena, which formerly would 
have been ascribed to supernatural agency, but 
which are now traced to natural causes, or if 
such causes are not discoverable at present, the 
events are left unexplained, with the certain 
expectation that the progress of knowledge will 
bring to light a natural solution. Canon Moz- 
ley has well said: "The scientific era of the 
world has doubtless been an important period 
in the education of mankind; and with other 
parts of the mind of man, his belief in the mar- 
vellous has received an education." In other 
words, there has come to be an educated belief 
in the supernatural, more discriminating in its 
judgment and more exacting in its demands 
for positive evidence. But when Mr. Lecky 
infers from his statement of fact that this 
change has affected in any large degree the be- 
lief in New Testament miracles, or that with 
the decay of the tendency to ascribe modern 
marvels to supernatural agency the Christian 
belief is fast falling into decay, his inference 
is unwarranted. Christian miracles have been 
quite generally considered an exception, by 
reason of the character of the miracles them- 
selves, the paramount purpose for which they 



The PROOF from MIRACLES 139 

were wrought, the vital and consistent place 
which they hold in the Christian system, the 
spiritual lessons which they were evidently in- 
tended to convey, and the incontrovertible evi- 
dence in their support. 

To pronounce dogmatic judgment against 
the possibility of a miracle would seem to be 
the height of unwisdom, if it can be shown that 
there is some worthy and lofty spiritual end to 
be accomplished by it. It would imply the 
possession of an absolutely perfect knowledge 
of "the order of nature," in which we live, and 
an absolutely perfect knowledge of the vSu- 
preme Being, and the methods and possibilities 
of his activity. Notwithstanding the great 
progress which has been made in scientific 
knowledge, man's knowledge of nature, of nat- 
ural laws and forces, may be only in its in- 
fancy. And man's knowledge of God, what 
he can do and what he cannot do, is certainly 
finite, not to say infantile. 

Who can say that a miracle is in any such 
sense a violation of natural law that God who 
ordained the law would by working the miracle 
deny himself and thereby dethrone himself? 
He might be simply changing the manner of 



I40 WHY we BELIEVE tht BIBLE 

his activity, or if we may so speak, be suspend- 
ing or counteracting one law by the introduc- 
tion of another and a higher law. Men seem 
to be constantly doing this in their limited 
sphere and manner. Every time a man lifts an 
object in the air, he introduces a superior force, 
the force of his own will, over and above the 
law of gravitation, which would keep his arm 
at his side and the object on the ground. The 
law cannot be said to be broken or violated. It 
is simply counteracted, and for the moment 
rendered inoperative by the presence and 
agency of a superior force. It makes no differ- 
ence that the counteracting agency is a natural 
agency. If man can counteract a law of nature, 
and may do so without sin, so may God. Dr. 
George P. Fisher says : "The human will af- 
fords the most striking illustration of the pos- 
sibility of a miracle. The will, as related to 
material forces, is a distinct and higher power, 
and as thus related is supernatural. It initiates 
movements in the realm of nature. It produces 
results, countless in number and variety, which 
would not have come into being independently 
of its action." 

Now, a miracle, instead of being a violation 



The PROOF from MIRACLES 141 

of a law of nature in any immoral way, is sim- 
ply the introduction or interposition of a higher 
power for some exalted moral end. This is 
the customary definition. Dr. Alvah Hovey 
says : "By a miracle we mean an event which, 
according to the principles of sound reasoning, 
may and must be referred to the extraordinary 
agency of God," or if by the co-operation of 
natural forces, "such forces are directed and 
reinforced by extraordinary divine action, 
which superior action determines the event." 
Mansel calls a miracle "an interposition of di- 
vine power." Dr. McCosh defines it as "an 
event which is wrought in our world as a sign 
or proof of God making a supernatural revela- 
tion to man." Dean Farrar describes it as "an 
effect wrought by the direct interposition of 
the Creator and Governor of nature for the 
purpose of revealing a message or attesting a 
revelation." And Dr. George P. Fisher says: 
"When a miracle occurs, a new cause inter- 
venes, viz. : a special exertion of divine power, 
the power of the Creator and Upholder of na- 
ture. There is not even a violation of natural 
laws, in the proper sense of the phrase; for 
every statement of natural law, and every pre- 



142 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

diction of what is to occur under it, is made 
with the proviso, or on the tacit supposition, 
that there is to be no intervention of a super- 
natural agent." 

Again he says : "It is objected that a miracle 
would be a contravention by God of the laws 
of nature which he has himself established. 
Even were it so, the laws of nature are not 
moral laws. An interference with them would 
not involve in itself any moral wrong." 

This definition is accepted by many of the 
most profound students of nature, who find in 
their faith in the reality of miracles nothing in- 
consistent with their scientific beliefs. Prof. 
William Elder, an able professor in natural 
science in one of our New England colleges, 
says, in a volume entitled "Ideas from Nature" : 
''Miracle is not impossible. Only an atheist 
can consistently maintain that miracle is im- 
possible; his inconsistency with nature lies in 
his being an atheist. The agnostic freely ad- 
mits, T urge no claim of impossibility.' [He 
cannot deny the possibility of miracle, for he 
cannot consistently deny anything. All he can 
consistently do is to confess his utter and uni- 
versal ignorance.] While that crude view 



The PROOF from MIRACLES 143 

which regards the universe as a gigantic ma- 
chine started ages ago, whose maker sits idly 
or helplessly apart, and sees it go, makes no 
claim on intelligence." 

Again, Professor Elder says that while "a 
world governed according to law is necessary 
for a miracle, ... a miracle is not necessarily 
a violation of a law of nature. It cannot be 
maintained that a miracle is a violation of a law 
of nature, and therefore impossible. So Hume 
defined it ; but Huxley does not hesitate to point 
out his error. 'The definition of a miracle as 
a violation of the laws of nature is in reality 
an employment of language which, in the face 
of the matter, cannot be justified.' " 

"We have experience of only a small portion 
of universal nature ; we know a few of its laws, 
and of these our knowledge is but rudimen- 
tary. What appears to us exceptional action 
may be a part of the Creator's plan, a law of 
the universe as a whole, as truly as the regu- 
larity which we daily experience is his ordi- 
nary method of government in that small frac- 
tion of the universe which is the school of our 
earthly life, and in which it has pleased him to 
limit his ordinary action to these uniform 



144 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

methods so that it may be a fit school. Much 
difficulty is removed when we clearly apprehend 
this fact that Christian miracles, events quite 
outside the known laws of our world, may yet 
be in perfect harmony with the unknown laws 
of the universe, of which our world forms so 
small a fraction." 

The man who denies the possibility of mir- 
acles, then, not only assumes to know all the 
unknown laws and forces of the universe, but 
he also claims to know that when the universe 
and its laws were brought into being, God either 
exhausted himself or circumscribed his power 
and his activity; in other words, he shut him- 
self out of the universe which he had created, 
and determined to let it alone — or else there is 
no transcendent God and no supernatural. A 
denial of miracles is, therefore, either a refusal 
to grant to the Creator a right and a power of 
interposition in the natural world which his 
creatures are in some measure exercising every 
day, or it is a denial of the existence of any law 
or force above the narrow world with which 
men are acquainted, and therefore a denial of 
the supernatural, which is a denial of the 
primary postulate of the highest philosophy 



The PROOF from MIRACLES 145 

and of the deepest intuition of the human mind. 

In estabhshing the credibihty of miracles, 
three facts are important to be remembered. 

First, there must be the most incontroverti- 
ble evidence. The miracle must be lifted above 
the reach of reasonable doubt or suspicion by 
the number and character of its witnesses. Not 
all professed miracles have been real miracles. 
The existence of the counterfeit always bears 
its testimony to the existence of the genuine. 
There is a marked difference between the 
miracles of the New Testament and those 
which the Roman Catholic Church has offered 
to the acceptance of its adherents, and, indeed, 
any alleged modern miracles, both in their char- 
acter and the nature of their evidence. Evi- 
dence may be so strong, so consistent, so con- 
vincing that to doubt it would be more unrea- 
sonable than to accept the event. Hume's cele- 
brated argument against the possibility of 
proving miracles by testimony has been an- 
swered many times, and not only by believers 
in miracles, but by unbelievers as well. Mill, 
as well as Huxley, has shown its weakness and 
errors. Mill has confessed that the evidence 
for the unbroken uniformity of nature is coun- 



146 WHY iL^e BELIEVE the BIBLE 

teracted by whatever weight belongs to the evi- 
dence for the miracle or miracles. To any man 
who believes in the immanence of God the 
weight of evidence for his interposition in any 
given instance may be sufficient to overcome 
completely the ad^xrse evidence from nature's 
uniformity. Professor Fisher has said : "All 
that Hume has made out, as ]\Iill explains, is 
that no evidence can prove a miracle to an 
atheist or to a deist who supposes himself able 
to prove that God would not interfere to pro- 
duce the miraculous event in question. IMill 
adds truly 'that natural religion is the neces- 
sary basis of revealed ; that the proofs of Chris- 
tianity presuppose the being and moral at- 
tributes of God: that it is the conformitv of a 
religion to those attributes which determines 
whether credence ought to be given to its ex- 
ternal evidences.' " 

Goldwin Smith, in his contribution to a re- 
cent volume, ''The Progress of the Century," 
in which he discusses the progress of free 
thought, acknowledges that "Hume's argu- 
ment against the credibility of miracles will 
hardly bear examination. Assuming the exist- 
ence of God and his care for men as his work, 



The PROOF from MIRACLES 147 

which Hume does not openly deny, there is no 
presumption against his revelation of himself 
in the only conceivable way, which is by an in- 
terruption of the general course of things ; there 
is rather a presumption that he would so reveal 
himself. Nor can it be maintained that no de- 
gree of evidence, say that of a multitude of 
scientific men, after providing all possible safe- 
guards against deception, would satisfy us of 
the fact." This acknowledgment may be 
classed with that of Mill and Huxley, and may 
be accepted as a satisfactory reply to Hume. 
But as a personal acknowledgment, after his 
treatment of the numerous, intelligent, honest, 
unimpeachable witnesses of Christ's miracles, 
already quoted, it has little value. It reminds 
one of the Scotchman who confessed himself 
willing to be convinced, but added he would 
like to see the man who could convince him. 

Secondly, the reality of one miracle, proved 
beyond a reasonable doubt, establishes the pos- 
sibility, not to say probability, of other miracles 
in the same system. Professor Elder affirms: 
''Science accepts one miracle, creation. When 
we inquire about the origin of matter and 
energy, of life and mind, we are compelled to 



148 Why we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

refer to creative acts other than those with 
which we are made famiUar by what is seen 
of the operation of natural causes. . . . Evo- 
lution does not attempt to account for the 
origin of nature; that lies quite beyond its 
scope, and must be viewed as the direct act of 
God." This is not the conclusion of a the- 
ologian, but of a professional scientist. He 
also says : "The new creation of the human 
soul, the central event of human history, may 
fitly be classed with it.'"' 

But whoever may question these conclusions 
of the scientist, it would seem that no candid 
man can call in question the miraculous char- 
acter of the person of Jesus Christ. He is the 
colossal, the unquestionable miracle of Chris- 
tianity. No man has been able to classify him. 
No man has been able to bring him within the 
operation of merely natural causes. He stands 
alone, unique, absolutely unaccounted for upon 
any naturalistic theory. He is the towering 
personality of the ages. Mr. Griffith- Jones is 
constrained to acknowledge that ''This fresh 
beginning in the career of humanity is in itself 
a miracle. There were no indications that such 
a fact was possible by means of the 'resident 



The PROOF from MIRACLES 149 

forces' of the human heart, using the word 
'resident' in its restricted sense; such an im- 
pulse must come from the spiritual environ- 
ment acting on the soul ; that is, by the descent 
of *the power from on high.' " This one 
primary miracle of Christianity makes all the 
Christian miracles possible, and not only pos- 
sible, but probable. The miraculous person 
must possess miraculous gifts and powers, and 
his life must be full of miraculous deeds. The 
reason expects it. Consistency demands it. 
The entire manifestation of Christ must be har- 
monious. A life begun in a supernatural birth 
must be continued in the exercise of supernat- 
ural powers, and end in a supernatural resur- 
rection. The impression must be a unit, other- 
wise the sublime object of the manifestation 
would be defeated. Christianity, which cen- 
tres in the divine Christ, is founded in miracle. 
The miraculous is inseparably connected with 
it. It seems impossible to believe in Christian- 
ity at all without believing in the miraculous. 
President Rush Rhees says in "The Life of 
Jesus of Nazareth" : "The evidence for the 
supreme miracle — the transcendent character 
of Jesus — is clear, and the miraculous element 



I50 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

in the story of his life must be considered in 
view of this supreme miracle. In association 
with him his miracles gain in credibility." 

A serious mistake is often made in consider- 
ing the Christian miracles as isolated occur- 
rences, apart from the system of which they 
form an inseparable part, and apart from him 
upon whose unique person and character the 
whole system rests. Illingworth, in his recent 
volume, ''Divine Immanence," says with great 
force: ''But if the incarnation was a fact, and 
Jesus Christ was what he claimed to be, his 
miracles, so far from being improbable, will 
appear the most natural things in the world. 
For no one will deny that in this case he could 
have worked them, and when we look at them, 
it seems likely that he would, for they harmon- 
ize completely with his whole character and 
work — being mainly acts of charity and mercy, 
either to the bodies or the souls of men, and at 
the same time profoundly symbolical of spirit- 
ual truth. They are, indeed, so essentially a 
part of the character depicted in the Gospels, 
that without them that character would en- 
tirely disappear. They flow naturally from a 
person who, despite his obvious humanity, im- 



The PROOF from MIRACLES 151 

presses us throughout as being at home in two 
Avorlds. Moreover, the possessor of these mi- 
raculous powers is described as tempted to 
misuse them. No one, who reads the account 
of the temptation, can suppose for a moment 
that it was related with any reference to the 
credibility of miracles. But for that very rea- 
son its indirect bearing on their credibility is 
great; for nothing can suggest more forcibly 
that the miraculous power was real than the 
statement, incidentally made, that it Was the 
subject of temptation, with the further impli- 
cation that, in many cases, it was consciously 
present, but unused. . . . There is a dignity, a 
beauty, a reserve of power, a restriction of use, 
a depth of spiritual insight, in the miracles at- 
tributed to Christ, which makes us feel that 
they are not merely congruous with his whole 
personality, but part of it. We cannot separate 
the wonderful life or the wonderful teaching 
from the wonderful works. They involve and 
interpenetrate each other, and form in their in- 
dissoluble combination one harmonious pic- 
ture." 

The beauty and freshness of this quotation 
are a sufficient justification of its length. 



152 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

A third fact to be remembered in discussing 
the credibility of miracles is that the end and 
purpose of miracles must be worthy of the di- 
vine interposition, of the extraordinary display 
of supernatural power. They must have some 
moral and spiritual aim. They must be to au- 
thenticate some divine message, to recall some 
important truth that may have been forgotten 
under the unchanging order of nature, or to 
establish faith in some new truth that God may 
think necessary for the highest welfare of his 
creatures. To a world, therefore, in which by 
reason of sin the voices of nature and of con- 
science are unheeded or have proved inade- 
quate, the miracle may be a necessity to awaken 
the slumbering moral sense, to remind men of 
a forgotten God, or to confirm faith in a new 
revelation of grace and power, which he may 
be pleased to make known to them. A foresee- 
ing and benevolent God, anticipating the fall, 
the folly and the forgetfulness of his moral 
creatures, may have built, to use the words of 
another, "a universe so constituted as to wel- 
come, now and then, a fresh impulse from the 
divine hand, a new display of sovereign power, 
proving to the awed spirit of men that God is 



The PROOF from MIRACLES 153 

more than a principle of order, or causation, or 
development; that he is a holy and loving 
Father, greater even than the temple of na- 
ture." 

The miracle, therefore, is not only not a vio- 
lation of the lav^s of nature v^hich the will 
of God has ordained, but it is a new and gra- 
cious expression of the will of a transcendent 
God, and a necessary appeal to the moral na- 
ture and faith of men in confirmation of the 
validity and trustworthiness of a message, on 
the acceptance of which the present well-being 
and eternal destiny of men depend. It has its 
necessity and place in the history of a lost 
world as part of God's greater plan for the 
spiritual guidance and redemption of mankind. 

There have been three distinct periods in 
human history when miracles have been 
wrought, and when it seems that nothing but 
miracles would have accomplished the end 
which God had in view. In the time of Moses, 
when it was necessary to establish his leader- 
ship among the children of Israel, and lead 
them forth from bondage to the land of prom- 
ise, God spoke by means of miracles. In the 
days of Elijah, when God would rescue his 



154 WHY "dce BELIEVE the BIBLE 

chosen people from idolatry, and preserve 
through his endorsed ministr}' a monotheistic 
faith in the earth, God spoke by means of mir- 
acles. And then in the foundation of Chris- 
tianity, the culmination of all previous religious 
teaching and the one universal spiritual re- 
ligion, God spoke through miracles wrought by 
Christ and his apostles. Miracles accomplished 
then in a brief time what might otherwise have 
been impossible. The incarnation alone would 
not have been sufficient. This "invisible mir- 
acle," as Bishop Butler calls it, required to be 
proved by visible miracles. "Miracles," says 
Robert Hall, "were the bell of the universe 
which God rang to call men to hear his Son." 
Men by them were attracted to him, were led 
to acknowledge his divine claims, were estab- 
lished in their faith, were made com^petent wit- 
nesses to his truth, and went forth to the evan- 
gelization of the nations. Browning says of 
that time: 

"I say that miracle was duly wrought, 
When but for it no faith was possible." 

In each of these three periods miracles have 
had a distinct and holy purpose, and have ren- 
dered an immensely important service. They 



The PROOF from MIRACLES 155 

have brought God in an unusual and startling 
manner into human experience, and have im- 
pressed upon the forgetting and rebellious 
minds of men the thought of his sovereignty, 
his nearness and his grace. They have been 
the accompaniments of the proclamation of the 
divine will, the authentication of a divine re- 
velation, and in some true sense a criterion of 
that revelation. 

Miracles have not been continuous; if they 
had been, they would have ceased to be mir- 
acles, and would have dropped into the com- 
mon experience of men, losing their power to 
impress the mind or to be of any evidential 
value to a special message or revelation. Their 
infrequency has given them worth and power, 
and, indeed, has made for their probability, if 
the moral emergency has been such as to de- 
mand them. 

Christianity must undoubtedly depend to- 
day largely upon its own self-commending 
power to the intelligence, the moral sense and 
need of men, and upon that personal revelation 
which comes to every believing heart, when 
God graciously reveals his Son in it. The su- 
perior excellence of Christ's doctrine, and the 



156 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

manifest superhumanity of his character, ought 
to be the sufficient criteria of the Christian rev- 
elation and to command the faith of men 
everywhere. There seems to be little or no 
need of fresh miracles at the present time in 
confirmation of Christianity, especially as we 
have the inspired record of its miraculous be- 
ginning, and the existence of organized Chris- 
tianity, with its marvellous progress and 
triumphs, and its blessed and far-reaching 
fruits. "If they hear not Moses and the proph- 
ets, neither will they be persuaded though 
one rose from the dead." Yet the old and well- 
attested miracles may still have their place 
among Christian evidences, and their influence 
upon many minds, as they did in the days of 
Christ and his apostles, in the confirmation of 
faith in the Christian religion, and as the ap- 
propriate authentication of a divine revelation 
of truth and grace. 

Dr. Richard S. Storrs has said in striking 
language : "The whole New Testament would 
become to me inharmonious in its proportions, 
timid in its challenge to the faith of the world, 
emptied of the ultimate majesty and lustre of 
Omnipotent Love, if there ever should be ex- 



The PROOF from MIRACLES 157 

pelled from its tender and dauntless pages these 
sovereign demonstrations of the Divine Will, 
immanent in the person and illustrious in the 
action of him who as Christ claims unique au- 
thority in the world." 

It is undoubtedly true that many of Christ's 
miracles w^ere performed as a means of 
strengthening and rewarding a faith in him 
already exercised. Sometimes the unbelief of 
the multitude seemed to restrict his gracious 
activity, and he did not many mighty works in 
their community because of it. He never 
wrought his miracles as mere marvels, public 
exhibitions of supernatural power, to gratify 
an idle curiosity, or to minister to personal need, 
or attain any selfish end. Yet his miracle- 
working did make a profound impression upon 
the people, so much so that sometimes he was 
compelled to escape into retirement. There 
were not a few persons whose estimate of him, 
and whose belief in him, were determined by 
"the works of God" which were made manifest 
through him, as well as by the gracious words 
which proceeded out of his mouth. 

The thoughtful and inquiring Nicodemus, 
himself a teacher of the Jews, confessed : "We 



158 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

know that thou art a teacher come from God, 
for no man can do these miracles that thou 
doest except God be with him." The miracles 
of Christ were to him the satisfactory creden- 
tials as to his divine authority as a teacher of 
truth. We are told that "many of the people 
believed on him, and said, when Christ cometh, 
will he do more miracles than these which this 
man hath done?" It was Christ's miracles that 
convinced them that he was the expected Mes- 
siah, and won their faith to him. And again 
it is said that ''many believed in his name when 
they saw the miracles which he did." This was 
the argument which they could not gainsay or 
resist. 

Moreover, it is evident that Christ himself 
appealed to his miraculous deeds in vindication 
of his high claim and in attestation of the divine 
origin of his message. When the once clear 
visioned, but now despondent John the Bap- 
tist, sent to Christ from prison, inquiring who 
he was, he replied : "Go and show John again 
those things which ye do hear and see. The 
blind receive their sight and the lame walk, the 
lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead 
are raised up, and the poor have the gospel 



The PROOF from MIRACLES 159 

preached to them. And blessed is he whoso- 
ever shall not be offended in me." These works 
of miraculons power, said Christ, are my suf- 
ficient credentials. I need say nothing more. 
Was Christ an honest man when he said he 
wrought miracles? Was it right and wise for 
him to refer to them as the criterion by which 
his person, his mission and his message should 
be judged ? 

Again, on one occasion, Christ rebuked the 
Jews, because they refused to accept the testi- 
mony of his miracles, and followed him simply 
to be fed. "Ye seek me not because ye saw the 
miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, 
and were filled." And on another occasion 
Christ distinctly said that he was going to work 
the miracle which he wrought in demonstra- 
tion of the fact of his divine character and 
power and message — "That ye may know that 
the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive 
sins, he saith to the sick of the palsy, arise." 

What were the miracles of Christ, and what 
was their object? Deeds of charity and com- 
passion for the relief of human suffering? 
Yes, many of them undoubtedly were. But 
they were more; they were the outward rep- 



i6o WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

resentations of deep spiritual realities, as Pas- 
cal has said : "As nature is an image of grace, 
so the visible miracles are but the images of 
those invisible, which God wills to accomplish." 
And they were still more ; they were "signs and 
wonders and mighty works," attestations of the 
divine origin and character of the Christian re- 
ligion, indisputable proofs of the trustworthi- 
ness of the message and the reality of the rev- 
elation. "God also bearing them witness 
both with signs, and wonders, and divers mir- 
acles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according 
to his own will." 

A denial of miracles makes the Christian 
gospels a collection of legends and fables, 
Christ himself an unsubstantial myth, and 
Christianity, with all its glorious achievements, 
an empty dream. A refusal to accept them as 
corroborative of the Christian revelation is put- 
ting asunder what God hath joined together. 
Miracles are an integral part of Christianity. 
Christ and miracles stand or fall together. 
"Believe me that I am in the Father and the 
Father in me, or else believe me for the very 
works' sake." 



THE TESTIMONY FROM 
CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 



"And ye shall he witnesses unto me both in Je- 
rusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and 
unto the uttermost parts of the earth." (Acts 
i:8.) 



CHAPTER V. 

THE TESTIMONY I^ROM CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 

The disciples of Christ were to make known 
to men everywhere the great facts of his birth, 
his Hfe, his death, his resurrection, and his re- 
turn to earth, all that pertained to his unique 
and divine personality and to his redemptive 
mission on earth, as it had been unfolded to 
their open minds and receptive hearts. They 
were to be "witnesses unto him." But their 
testimony was to be more than the testimony 
of instructed lips. It was to be the testimony 
of personal experiences and changed lives. 
They were to preach the Gospel and to write 
epistles; but still more, they were to be "living 
epistles," whose testimony should be in har- 
mony with the truth spoken by the lips and 
written by the pen. Christian doctrine was 
evermore to find its verification in Christian 
experience and its confirmation in Christian 
character. The words of Amiel are beautifully 



i64 WHY z.'c BELIEVE the BIBLE 

and solemnly true : "Even.- life is a profession 
of faith, and exercises an ine\dtable and silent 
propaganda. As far as lies in its power, it 
tends to transform the universe and humanity 
into its o\^Ti image. Thus we have aU a cure 
of souls. Ever}- man is a center of i>erpetual 
radiation, like a luminous body; he is, as it 
vrere, a beacon, which entices a ship upon the 
rcxrks, if it does not guide it into port." 

It is a pecuharit}' of the truth of revelation 
that it cannot be full}- apprehended by processes 
of reasoning, but must be brought to the test 
of personal experience in order to find its fullest 
^-indication as a system of truth, divine in its 
origin and divinely adapted to the needs of men. 
Though a man may understand all miracles 
and aU secular history, though he may be able 
to decipher the confirmator)^ inscriptions on all 
monuments, Egyptian, Assyrian and Bal^- 
lonian, and may recognize the superiority of the 
Bible to all other sacred books, though he may 
reflect with wonder uj)on the signal triumphs 
which Christianit}- has achieved in the world, 
and yet have not experience, he has failed of 
the chief evidence in behalf of the divine au- 
thorit}- and power of the rehgion of Christ 



The TESTIMONY from EXPERIENCE 165 

As the Christian religion has for its aim not 
simply intellectual conviction, but the trans- 
formation of character, as it offers to men not 
simply certain great truths to be believed, but 
certain great principles to be lived, and cer- 
tain great promises and hopes to be enjoyed, 
its ultimate appeal must always be to the ex- 
periences of men. This is its supreme test and 
its invincible proof that it is what it professes 
to be, and accomplishes what it claims to ac- 
complish. 

On the one hand, this is an embarrassment. 
Dr. Richard S. Storrs has truly said : "An em- 
barrassment arises from the fact that the re- 
ligion itself makes a personal spiritual experi- 
ence of its power the only final evidence of it. 
'Taste, and see that the Lord is good' ; *if any 
man be minded to do the will of my Father in 
heaven, he shall know of the teaching whether 
it be of God, or whether I speak of myself ; 
these are consenting representative declarations 
from the older writings, and the later of what 
is called among us the Bible, which harmonize 
with many others in setting forth the fact that 
only by spiritual experiment of the Gospel can 
man be assured of its divine origin, as ultimate- 



i66 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

ly proved by its divine energy. All other im- 
pressions of this must be, in the nature of the 
case, preparatory, rudimental." 

He illustrates this statement in the follow- 
ing beautiful and practical words: "Only by 
trying it do men find with what subtle and ex- 
quisite adaptation the air is fitted to the lungs, 
so that by inhaling it their life is reinforced. 
Only by joyful experience of it is such a cer- 
tainty produced in the mind of the inestimable 
beauty of sunshine, as could have been formed, 
as can be shaken, by no argument conceiv- 
able. . . So it is only by trying Christianity, 
in its fitness to our deepest personal needs, of al- 
liance with God, of moral renovation, of tran- 
quillity and of hope, that men can become utter- 
ly certain that it is from above ; not a fabric, any 
more than the earth is, of human fancy, or a 
construction of human logic, or even a brilliant 
and lofty surmise of human aspiration; but a 
divine system, as is the atmosphere, as is radi- 
ant light, presented by God to the world of 
mankind for their permanent sovereign life and 
peace." 

On the other hand, this fact that experience 
is the supreme test of the truth of the Bible, is 



The TESTIMONY from EXPERIENCE 167 

an immense advantage to revealed truth, for it 
places its strongest and its best evidence within 
the reach of every man, however humble his 
ability, or meager his attainments, or deformed 
his life. The evidence from experience is open 
to everybody. All persons can put the Gospel 
of Christ to the test, and prove its power, its 
excellence, and its divine claims. It is not the 
weighing of arguments, the ability to appre- 
hend or establish a system of doctrine, to con- 
struct and defend a body of divinity, but it is 
simply the application of truth to conscience 
and to life. Christianity says to every man, 
prove me now herewith, and see if I am not 
from God, by the fruits of personal faith and 
obedience, by the moral renovations which I 
produce, by the changed dispositions which I 
create, by the satisfying hopes and joys which I 
bring, by my ability to meet the profoundest 
needs, and answer the irrepressible longings of 
the immortal spirit. 

As has been said, this is the best kind of evi- 
dence. It banishes all doubt. It is undisturbed 
by hostile argument. It is the evidence of per- 
sonal experience. A man knows that grain is 
nourishing, because he has eaten it. A man 



1 68 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

knows that the rays of the sun contain light 
and heat, because he has walked in their light 
and been warmed by their heat. His faith rests 
not upon testimony, but upon actual experi- 
ment. It has been converted into knowledge 
and life. In like manner a man knows that the 
Bible is divine, because it has kindled in his 
heart divine affections and aspirations, and a 
hatred for all that is evil and unlike God. He 
knows that it has come down from God, be- 
cause it lifts him up to God. It may be said 
that no man is fully competent to sit in judg- 
ment upon Christianity until he has put it to 
the test of practical experience. He has cer- 
tainly omitted one evidence of its divineness, 
which is higher and deeper than all others, and 
upon which Christianity especially relies for 
the proof of its true origin, as well as for the 
means of its progress. 

President Ezekiel Robinson has said: "A 
religion to get itself established among men 
must satisfy some at least of the wants of the 
human soul. A religion which is to win for 
itself the confidence of men as of divine origin 
in a sense that nO' other is, and as having ex- 
clusive authority from God, must show itself 



The TESTIMONY from EXPERIENCE 169 

equal to a supply of every existing, and of 
every developed, need of every human soul. 
The Christian finds that no want of his soul, 
however deep, or subtle, or urgent, or progress- 
ively capacious, is unprovided for in Chris- 
tianity. The more completely and the longer 
he tests its provisions, the more profoundly he 
becomes convinced of its divine origin and au- 
thority." 

This evidence from experience, while it is 
the final evidence of the divine nature and 
power of Christianity, and the most convincing 
of all evidences, may be said also to be the 
primary evidence, without which a man can- 
not properly weigh other evidences. It puts 
him in a mental condition, in which he can feel 
the force of all arguments in favor of the in- 
spiration of the Bible and the divine authority 
of its teachings. To quote again from Presi- 
dent Robinson: "It, in fact, alone qualifies 
him for an appreciation of other evidences. 
He became a Christian not because outward 
evidences persuaded him, but because con- 
sciousness of inward want impelled him. This 
inward want once satisfied, the meaning and 
worth of outward evidences are easily under- 



I70 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

stood. They are invaluable as defences against 
outward assaults. Assailed by critics, he forti- 
fies the outworks of his faith by evidences gath- 
ered from every available field of knowledge; 
but that which holds him in perfect peace and 
assurance of safety is the felt power of his 
faith in the personal and living Christ." 

It is impossible to over-emphasize the im- 
portance of personal experience in determining 
the value of religious truth. It was this more 
than the miracles of Christ and his apostles 
that established Christianity at the first as the 
religion come from God, and it is this that will 
carry it forward to its universal triumph. As 
men yield to its power and put its truths to this 
test, they will bow to its divinity with an un- 
questioning faith, and unhesitatingly confess 
that this religion of Christ is not of man or of 
human origination, but of God and his revealed 
grace. Then they will acknowledge, as did the 
villagers of Samaria: "Now we believe, not 
because of thy testimony, for we have heard 
him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the 
Christ, the Saviour of the world." As is the 
laboratory in the study of science, so is experi- 
ence in the study of religion. 



T/i^ TESTIMONY /fom EXPERIENCE 171 

The statement of Prof. Charles W. Shields 
is too strong as to the impotence of Christian 
evidences, but not too strong as to the confirma- 
tory power of Christian experience. He says : 
"No man was ever led to Christ by the evi- 
dences of Christianity. No man cometh except 
the Father draw him, neither will they be per- 
suaded, though one rose from the dead. The 
testimony of miracles is complete in itself and 
conclusive, but the true ground of all rational 
conviction is in the truth as self-vindicatory, 
as testified in us by the Holy Spirit, and as per- 
petually re-established by the most endearing 
witnesses from our own experience." 

We might refer to the cases of persons who 
have been openly wicked and immoral, bound 
fast in the iron chains of deadly sins until their 
recovery to lives of virtue and respectability 
seemed hopeless, and yet who have been sud- 
denly and permanently emancipated by the 
power of Christian truth. These have been vis- 
ible illustrations of Christ's saying : "Ye shall 
know the truth, and the truth shall make you 
free." There have been many such in all these 
Christian years; profane men who have been 
made devout and prayerful; passionate and 



172 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

cruel men who have become gentle and kind 
and loving; human tigers who have fed on 
bloodshed and cannibalism, who have been 
tranformed into inoffensive and lamb-like peo- 
ples; criminals who have abandoned their evil 
courses and have become good citizens and 
neighbors, honest, law-abiding and virtuous; 
intemperate men who have been made sober 
and industrious, good husbands and fathers; 
men in whom the grossest habits have been 
overcome, the most violent passions have been 
subdued and the most tyrannical appetites have 
been completely and forever eradicated from 
their natures. Such cases are sometimes called 
"miracles of grace" ; and, indeed, they are, and 
their changed lives, dispositions and characters 
bear unmistakable testimony to the power of 
God working in them, and to the divinity of the 
faith of Christ, which has transformed them, 
and made them literally new creatures in him. 
But it is not necessary to limit the thought 
to exceptional cases. All Christian experience 
bears uniform witness to the divine adaptability 
of saving truth. Every conversion, being the 
result of the direct activity of the divine Spirit, 
is of the nature of a miracle. It is not a viola- 



The TESTIMONY from EXPERIENCE 173 

tion of any known spiritual law; but it is the 
introduction of a new and living force, even 
the Almighty Spirit of God, to touch, tO' renew, 
to quicken, to change, to guide the spirit of 
man, and to bring it to repentance and faith in 
Jesus Christ, and to a life of obedience and fel- 
lowship with God. The human spirit, being 
**born again," in the significant language of 
Scripture, is brought under the influence of a 
new and controlling heredity. "You hath he 
quickened (that is, made alive), who were dead 
in trespasses and sins." "Except a man be 
born from above, he cannot see the kingdom 
of God." 

Vinet, a Christian writer not given to ex- 
travagant statement, said : "The greatest mir- 
acle that I know of is that of my conversion. 
I was dead, and I live. I was blind, and I see. 
I was a slave, and I am free. I was an enemy 
of God, and I love him. . . . Behold the mir- 
acle! And if God has been able to work that 
one, there are none of which he is not capable." 
Dr. A. J. Gordon, commenting on these words, 
used the following language : "If the force of 
this powerful confession be analyzed, it will be 
found to lie in two elements — the experimental 



174 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

character of the evidence which it conveys, and 
the supernatural character of the experience 
which it records. To have been the witness of 
a miracle constitutes a great qualification for 
defending Christianity; but to have been the 
subject of a miracle constitutes a greater quali- 
fication. And such is the position of one who 
has been regenerated, and who has learned in 
his own life what it is to be delivered from the 
tendencies of an evil human nature, and to be 
made subject to the powerful impulse of the 
divine nature implanted by the Holy Spirit. 
In a word, conversion is the strongest, most 
universal and most polyglot evidence of Chris- 
tianity which the Church can present to the 
world. Neander calls it 'the greatest of all 
miracles, the standing miracle of the ages' ; and 
because this witness to Christ is a perpetual 
one, not to be remanded to the apostolic age, 
like the miracles of healing and resurrection 
wrought by our Lord and his disciples, . . . 
but one of present and every-day occurrence, it 
has a more practical and immediate value in 
dealing with objectors than any which can be 
employed." 

It is generally implied in the discussion of 



The TESTIMONY from EXPERIENCE 175 

miracles that all miracles were wrought by the 
operation of supernatural force over natural 
law, and so were limited to the material uni- 
verse as their arena. But it must be remem- 
bered that the inspired records inform us that 
Christ, npt only in the judgment of his con- 
temporaries, but by his own confession, cast 
out demons from those who were afflicted with 
them, and the expulsion of evil spirits was not 
the least of miracles. This was the operation 
of Spirit over spirits. When, therefore, the 
Holy Spirit of God changes the carnal heart, 
renews the human spirit, casts out the evil 
passions, appetites and affections that have been 
dominant in the soul, and makes a man morally 
and spiritually sane, "in his right mind," in his 
normal condition as a child of God, with the 
holy loves and desires of a new heart and the 
abounding fruits of the divine Spirit, such a 
work is akin to the casting out of demons. The 
apostle Paul declared to the Christians at 
Ephesus that in time past they all walked "ac- 
cording to the prince of the power of the air, 
the spirit that now worketh in the children of 
disobedience." 

In these days, when men are denying the fact 



176 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

of the supernatural in the face of the manifes- 
tation of God in revelation and in history, or 
are explaining it away by some new and vapory 
and unnatural definition of "the natural," it 
is not any wonder that regeneration and con- 
version are made light of, and are reduced to 
natural processes, from which the distinct ac- 
tivity of the sovereign Spirit of God has been 
eliminated. We need a new exaltation and 
honoring of the Holy Spirit, who is immanent 
in nature and at the same time transcendent 
above nature, of gracious and sovereign power, 
as well as of distinct and recognizable activity, 
whose office it is to "convince the world of sin, 
of righteousness and of judgment," and "to 
take of the things of Christ and show them 
unto men." We need to make a fresh and pray- 
erful study of the language of Jesus Christ — 
"The Spirit bloweth where it listeth, and thou 
hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell 
whence it cometh and whither it goeth; so is 
every one that is born of the Spirit," and "Ex- 
cept a man be born of the Spirit, he cannot see 
the kingdom of God." We need this to save 
us from the threatened denial of a personal 
supreme Deity who is "God over all, blessed 



The TESTIMONY from EXPERIENCE 177 

for evermore/' and from a subtle species of 
Pantheism which is creeping into Christian 
churches and pulpits. We need it in order that 
our churches may realize again and constantly 
their dependence upon the Holy Spirit, under 
whose dispensation we now live, for all genuine 
increase and prosperity. We need it in order 
that we may recognize anew the presence and 
special gracious activity of the divine Spirit in 
every conversion, whether of child or adult, of 
moralist or profligate. 

It is because of this characteristic of every 
Christian experience, viz. : that it is born of 
the Spirit of God, and is nourished and 
strengthened and enriched by revealed truth, 
that it bears indisputable witness to the di- 
vine character of Christianity. Christian ex- 
perience becomes a homogeneous part of a su- 
pernatural system. Men may never have the 
great privilege of beholding a miracle in the 
material world, a man born blind seeing, a deaf 
man hearing, a leper cleansed by a touch, a dead 
man raised to life by a word; but they may 
themselves be miracles. The old physical 
miracles seemed to fulfil their mission and come 
to an end. We live now under a new and 



178 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

higher order of supernatural dispensation, the 
dispensation of Christian experience, of re- 
newed hearts and Hves that have been healed of 
spiritual blindness, and deafness, and leprosy, 
and quickened into a new and godly life. What 
else did Christ mean when he said: "And 
greater works than these shall you do, because 
I go unto my Father" ? There are no greater 
physical miracles than those which Christ 
wrought. The "greater works" must be in the 
spiritual realm. The coming of the Spirit, 
with renewing and transforming power, was 
dependent, Christ said, upon his departure. In 
fulfilment of his promise, the Spirit came, and 
his presence and activity are the abiding pos- 
session of the Church. 

In unfolding more particularly the bearing 
of the evidence of Christian experience upon 
the divine nature of the Christian religion, it 
may be remarked : 

First, that the Bible presents an accurate 
picture of human nature. Nowhere else in the 
whole range of literature is the nature of man 
so vividly and truthfully portrayed. When 
men unaided have undertaken to draw the 
human portrait, it has always been partial, par- 



The TESTIMONY from EXPERIENCE 179 

tisan, incomplete and false. But in the Bible it 
appears in all its dignity and possibility, and in 
all its weakness and shame and need. Man 
came from the hand of God, made in his like- 
ness. He fell into sin, and the effects of sin 
upon his relation to his Maker and to his fel- 
low-man, and upon himself, entailing moral 
weakness and blindness and corrupt tendency, 
are all set forth. Thoughtful men have ever 
acknowledged that the picture was taken from 
life, and that the artist was divine. It was 
Coleridge, that philosopher of rare spiritual in- 
sight, who confessed : "I know the Bible is 
inspired, because it finds me at greater depths 
of my being than any other book." All other 
books failed to penetrate into the recesses of 
his nature. Their light shed its rays only a 
little way below the surface of the turbid stream 
of being. The Bible shot its rays down to the 
bottom, revealing its complex motives, its subtle 
workings, its evil tendencies, its secret faults 
and its inherent needs. 

It was the command of the Greek philosophy : 
"O man, know thyself !" But with all its wis- 
dom, it left him powerless to obey. The Bible 
says : "The heart is deceitful above all things, 



i8o WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

and desperately wicked; who can know it"? 
The impHcation is that all human attempts to 
solve the mystery of evil in the soul are futile. 
But God's Word holds up to every man the re- 
flected image of his true self. "It is quick and 
powerful," we are told, "and sharper than any 
two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing 
asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and 
marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and 
intents of the heart." 

Self-knowledge lies at the basis of all re- 
ligion. It is the first step towards the knowl- 
edge of God. No man ought to be willing to 
live for a single hour in a state of self-decep- 
tion, if the truth is knowable. Such is the 
mystery of the soul, its blindness, its conscious 
or unconscious deceit, its hidden depths, that 
only God can know it, and only God can reveal 
it. The Bible is as much a revelation of man 
as of God. The enlightened experience bears 
out the truthfulness of the divine description of 
the moral condition of the race. 

Secondly, Christian experience bears wit- 
ness to the divine nature of Christianity in that 
it proves its perfect adaptability to human 
needs. The Bible not only discloses the con- 



The TESTIMONY from EXPERIENCE i8i 

dition and wants of man's spiritual nature, but 
it is exactly suited to its condition, and abund- 
antly satisfies its deepest wants. A few par- 
ticulars only can be suggested. 

Such is the nature of man, as affected by sin, 
that he needs, and must have, the impartation 
of a new principle of life, if he is ever to secure 
the goal of his being in a perfect manhood. 
This need is met by the offer of God's Spirit in 
regenerating power. A religion which should 
contain no new birth, and make provision for 
no radical change of purpose and of disposition, 
would not meet the necessities of human nature. 
All processes of ordinary education, all ad- 
vance in civilization, all superficial reform, are 
utterly inadequate. To take from the Chris- 
tian system the doctrine of a distinct regenera- 
tion would leave it suited perhaps to some 
other race of beings, but not to the race which 
we know and to which we belong. The needed 
new life must begin in the experienced new 
birth. The spirit of man, in order to be re- 
deemed from the deadening influence of sin, 
must come under the direct operation of the 
quickening Spirit of God. Every person who 
has experienced a spiritual self-revelation has 



1 82 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

found the words of the Psalmist the exact and 
fitting expression of his consciousness of need : 
"Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew 
a right spirit within me." Christianity proves 
its divine sufficiency by recognizing this spon- 
taneous prayer of the enlightened soul, and 
making provision for its answer. And Chris- 
tian experience uniformly testifies to the reality 
of this inward new birth, which is, "not of the 
flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." 

Moreover, Christianity shows itself tO' be of 
God and not of man, by its unique method of 
salvation. The cross of Calvary is the accepted 
symbol of the Christian faith. The Son of 
God, an innocent Sufferer, giving his life, the 
just for the unjust, whose death bore relation, 
on the one hand, to divine law, and on the 
other, to human guilt, is the basal and immov- 
able truth of revelation, and answers to the 
deepest necessity of human nature. Any de- 
parture from this truth is not only a departure 
from the obvious teaching of the Word of God, 
but is a failure to answer the demands of a soul 
that has been enlightened and convicted of its 
moral condition. The cross is not only the ex- 
pression of the wisdom and grace of God, but 



The TESTIMONY from EXPERIENCE 183 

is the fitting prescription for the moral sick- 
ness of man. It was determined as much by 
man^s requirement as by God's ordainment. If 
its top points to the skies, its bottom is sunk 
deeply into the earth. 

The words of the Scriptures, used to de- 
scribe the atonement offered by Christ in be- 
half of men, are numerous and diverse. Per- 
haps no one of them expresses the whole 
thought of God in the sacrifice of his Son to 
be the world's Saviour. It may require all of 
them to set forth the nature of Christ's self- 
surrender and the redeeming love of the Heav- 
enly Father; and even then our conception of 
it may be all too weak and imperfect. Some 
students may fix their gaze upon one term, and 
others upon another, and in that way human 
views of the mysterious divine reality may ap- 
pear divergent, not to say antagonistic. All 
figures and all forms of expression are to be 
accepted, and interpreted in their obvious mean- 
ing, with the assurance that where man sees 
apparent discord, God sees eternal harmony. 

"For the love of God is broader 
Than the measure of man's mind; 

And the heart of the Eternal 
Is most wonderfully kind. 



i84 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

If our love were but more simple, 
We should take him at his word; 

And our lives would be all sunshine 
In the sweetness of our Lord." 



It is to be deplored that much of the theol- 
ogy of to-day is not exegetical or in any sense 
Biblical, but rather philosophical and specula- 
tive. Whole volumes of theolog}^ are written, 
with scarcely a quotation from the Word of 
God, unless it be made for the purpose of ex- 
plaining away its obvious meaning. But the 
saving truths of the Bible, clothed in the 
language of inspiration, are adapted to the 
felt necessities of the soul, and the sinning na- 
ture of man will never be satisfied with any 
philosophical scheme of salvation which ig- 
nores the pregnant and sacred language of 
Scripture, the chosen nomenclature of the 
Spirit of God, and which does not freely use, 
and candidly interpret, the words that describe 
the holy office and redemptive work of Christ, 
for example, "ransom," "mediator," "sacri- 
fice," "propitiation," "made a curse," "made 
to be sin for us," "Lamb of God which taketh 
away the sin of the world," and such like words 
— words with Jewish coloring, indeed, but 



The TESTIMONY from EXPERIENCE 185 

which find a response in the universal heart, 
and which cannot be discarded without weak- 
ening the power or destroying the identity of 
the saving message itself. Not speculation, 
but interpretation, the soul demands, and it will 
not long be deceived into a false peace, if the 
truth which God has provided for it and which 
it craves, is withheld from it. 

The sacrificial and mediatorial love of Christ 
satisfies the penitent heart of man as nothing 
else can, and is rooted forever in Christian ex- 
perience. The confession of faith on earth is : 
"In whom we have redemption through his 
blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the 
riches of his grace" ; and the confession of faith 
in heaven evermore will be: "Unto him that 
loved us, and washed us from our sins in his 
blood, and has made us kings and priests unto 
God and his Father, to him be glory and do- 
minion forever and ever. Amen." 

Again, Christianity proves its divine adapta- 
tion to human need, and therefore its divine 
origin, by its offer of a living Christ to the be- 
lieving soul. If faith in the crucified Christ 
imparts to the mind the peace of the divine for- 
giveness and restored fellowship with God, 



i86 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

faith in a present Christ as companion and 
friend, example and guide, counsellor and sup- 
port, is necessary to impart strength and cour- 
age and patience amid all the trials and vicis- 
situdes of life. The work of Christ in his brief 
visible manifestation is gloriously supplemented 
by his perpetual sympathy and unceasing activ- 
ity and aid, extended to all his followers. 
Christ has promised to take the disciple into 
personal union and communion with himself, 
to impart unto him his own life, that he may 
bear fruit abundantly, to feed and protect him 
as a good shepherd feeds and protects his sheep, 
to share with him his peace and his joy, and 
even his glory, which is moral likeness to the 
Father, to pray for him that he may be kept 
from the evil of the world, to provide with 
every temptation a way of escape, to cause all 
things to work together for his good, to sanc- 
tify to him his deepest distress, to be with him 
even to the end of the world, and then, when 
he has possessed, strengthened, guided, com- 
forted, protected and sanctified him, to come 
again and take him unto himself forever. 

As human conditions bear perpetual witness 
to the need of such a living and sympathizing 



The TESTIMONY from EXPERIENCE 187 

and almighty Saviour, so Christian experience 
in the midst of the sorrows and the hardships 
of life, the temptations of the world, the ex- 
tremities not infrequent to us all, and even in 
the fires of martyrdom, gives its abundant tes- 
timony to the fulfilment of these gracious di- 
vine promises. Many a heart has cried out in 
these troubled years : I know the Bible is true 
and is from God, because of what it has done 
and has been to me. It has been my comfort 
in sorrow, my strength in weakness and temp- 
tation, and my song in the midnight of my 
grief and loss. It has put a silver lining into 
every cloud that has hung low and dark upon 
my pathway, and has mingled much of sweet- 
ness in every bitter cup. 

Indeed, such is the present blessing of Chris- 
tianity, that prophets and philosophers, philan- 
thropists and poets have found the cure of all 
earthly ills in the universal coming of Christ 
to the souls of men and the universal preva- 
lence of the Christian religion. 

"Some day^ our homeless cries will draw thee down, 
And the old brightness on the ways of men 

Will send a hush upon the jangling town, 
And broken hearts will learn to love again. 



i88 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

Earth will go back to her lost youth, 

And life grow deep and wonderful as truth, 

When the wise King out of the nearing heaven comes 

To break the spell of long millenniums; 

To build with song again 

The broken hopes of men ; 

To hush and heroize the world 

Beneath the flag of brotherhood unfurled. 

And he will come some day ; 

Already is his star upon the way, 

He comes, O world, he comes!" 

And, finally, the Bible is its own unanswer- 
able witness, and proclaims its own divinity, in 
that it meets the deepest need of the soul by 
opening the gates of the future, and giving to 
men the authoritative assurance of a life be- 
yond this. Immortality is the supreme message 
of Christianity, and its supreme glory as a su- 
pernatural religion. Elsewhere are conjectures, 
intimations, unanswered longings; here is the 
certainty of a positive revelation. The old 
question, as old as the human race, is forever 
asking itself: "If a man die, shall he live 
again"? A brilliant infidel of our day makes 
this reply, the only reply which the rejector of 
the Bible can make : 

"And yet we question, dream, and guess, 
But knowledge we do not possess. 



The TESTIMONY from EXPERIENCE 189 

We ask, yet nothing seems to know; 

We cry in vain, 
There is no 'master of the show' 

Who will explain. 
Or from the future tear the mask; 
And yet we dream and still we ask. 

Is there beyond the silent night 

An endless day? 
Is death a door that leads to light? 

We cannot say. 
The tongueless secret locked in fate 
We do not know ; we hope and wait, 

That is all." 

Yes, that is all the answer that a man with- 
out a Bible has been able to give to the old 
heartrending question of the ages. It has 
never been fully, satisfactorily and unequivoc- 
ably answered outside of the Holy Scriptures 
of our faith. It is here that we read that 
"Christ came to bring life and immortality to 
light in the Gospel;" ''Because I live ye shall 
live also" ; "He that believeth in me, though he 
were dead, yet shall he live" ; "I am the resur- 
rection and the life"; "In my Father's house 
are many mansions; if it were not so (if there 
were no hereafter, no life beyond this, no eter- 
nal home of the soul, if such a dire calamity 
awaited you), I would have told you." 



I90 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

A religion which offered no blessed and cer- 
tain hope of immortality to men would be as 
empty and unsatisfying as a religion without 
God. Yet there are men to-day, even in our 
seats of learning, who turn away from the clear 
and positive revelation which God has given 
and authenticated in so many ways to an intel- 
ligent faith, and who, after nineteen hundred 
years of Christianity, are groping after God 
and religion and immortality. With blind- 
folded eyes they put themselves back into the 
times of Plato and Socrates and Cicero, and 
labor to find some scientific basis for spiritual 
realities. Let them open their ears, for God 
has certainly spoken to men, and it is no credit 
to any man to doubt when the Son of God has 
been on the witness stand. Let them open their 
eyes, for Christianity has been in the world for 
nineteen centuries, and countless myriads of 
followers have peacefully pillowed their dying 
heads upon its unfailing promises, have found 
its immortal hope converted into the unyielding 
anchor of the soul which reaches into the un- 
seen, and have said farewell to earth and 
friends, and crossed the invisible threshold of 
another world, chanting as they went: "I 



The TESTIMONY from EXPERIENCE 191 

know whom I have believed, and am persuaded 
that he is able to keep that which I have com- 
mitted imto him against that day," "Hence- 
forth is laid up for me a crown of righteous- 
ness." 

Christian experience, then, adds its irresis- 
tible evidence in support of the claims of the 
Word of God, and the divinely prearranged 
adaptability of the Gospel to the needs of the 
soul. It calls upon men everywhere to make 
the experiment for themselves, and see if these 
things are not so. This evidence is individual, 
and at the same time collective and cumulative. 
President Robinson has well said of the char- 
acter and weight of this evidence: "Individ- 
uals, multiplying and uniting in their testi- 
monies through successive generations, make 
public proclamation to all human intelligence. 
Countless millions of these testimonies, rolling 
up through all the Christian centuries into the 
vast volume of Christian literature, constitute 
an array of evidence in behalf of the divine 
origin of Christianity which unbelief cannot on 
any plea set aside." 

An experience of the truth is evermore nec- 
essary to the highest efficiency in the Christian 



192 WHY zve BELIEVE the BIBLE 

ministry. The candidate for ordination must 
first give an account of his conversion before 
he presents his views of Christian doctrine. 
''That which we have heard, which we have 
seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, 
and our hands have handled of the Word of 
life . . . declare we unto you, that ye also 
may have fellowship with us." A faith born 
of personal experience will kindle like faith in 
the hearts of men. It is undoubtedly true that 
much of the Biblical discussion of the pres- 
ent day is along lines unfamiliar to the ordi- 
nary Christian. But the continued sovereignty 
of the Word of God depends, not upon the skill 
of the apologists, but upon the vital experience 
of the present and coming generations. The 
fate of the Bible is not in the hands of its crit, 
ics, but of those who shall believe and illustrate 
its regenerating and sanctifying truths. 



THE EVIDENCE FROM 

THE TRIUMPHS OF 

CHRISTIANITY 



''And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, 
All power is given unto me in heaven and in 
earth. Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, 
baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of 
the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them 
to observe all things whatsoever I have com- 
manded you; and lo, I am with you alway, even 
unto the end of the world. Amen" (Matthew 
28:18-20.) 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE EVIDENCE I^ROM THE TRIUMPHS 01? CHRIS- 
TIANITY. 

The astonishing nature of Christ's final com- 
mission to his disciples has often been the sub- 
ject of remark. We have but to consider the 
circumstances in which the commission was 
given, its purpose and scope, and the confident 
tone in which it was uttered, together with the 
immense and seemingly insuperable obstacles 
in the way of its successful fulfilment, to be 
impressed with the sublime faith which Christ 
had in the divine nature of that system of truth 
which is contained in the Bible, and which we 
now denominate Christianity, and the infinite 
resources of power, which would accompany its 
proclamation in the world. Among the Chris- 
tian evidences, evidences which are adduced to 
establish the divine claims of the Bible and its 
message, the early triumphs of the Christian 
faith and the later progress of the Gospel hold a 
prominent place. 



196 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

The late Dr. Richard S. Storrs, in his able 
Lowell Lectures, entitled "The Supernatural 
Origin of Christianity, indicated by its His- 
torical Efifects," says : "No other question can 
be to us of superior importance, as matched 
against the question whether the religion of that 
New Testament, which is our inheritance, has 
come to us from God, or is the product of 
human logic, conjecture or legend." The tests 
which Christ authorized his disciples to apply 
to other teachers and other doctrines are to be 
applied no less rigidly to himself and his sys- 
tem of truth. "By their fruits you shall know 
them." It is a legitimate inquiry, what has 
Christianity accomplished, what have been its 
progress and influence in the world, what its 
effects upon social life and national develop- 
ment, that go to prove the divine character of 
the Sacred Scriptures and the message of truth 
embodied in them? 

It is not forgotten that the great commission, 
"Go ye, therefore, and disciple all nations," was 
given, according to the records, after the death 
of Christ, and to a little handful of weak, un- 
influential, disappointed and discouraged dis- 
ciples. They might have exclaimed, who are 



The TRIUMPHS of CHRISTIANITY 197 

we, that we should undertake to preach the 
Gospel to the whole world with any hope of a 
successful issue? And they certainly would 
have thus exclaimed, and been led by their fears 
to inactivity and disobedience, had it not been 
for one thing, viz. : the Christ who gave them 
commission had risen from the dead, and 
claimed to possess all power in heaven and in 
earth. Humanly speaking, taking into the ac- 
count simply the number of the disciples, their 
humble character, without learning, or social 
position, or political influence, and their visible 
resources, which were nil, to go forth on that 
commission was to go forth to utter failure 
and shameful rout. If the disciples of Christ 
had any success at all, it would be ample evi- 
dence that the power of God was in the mes- 
sage, and behind the message, that the message 
and the success were not of men, but of God. 

Then, too, the obstacles must have seemed 
well-nigh insurmountable. In no quarter, and 
among no known people, was there the slightest 
basis of hope that their effort to spread the new 
religion would meet with any encouraging re- 
sults. The Jews, the nation to which Christ 
and his first disciples belonged, had just put 



198 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

Christ to death with the permission and aid of 
the Roman power, to which they were unwill- 
ingly subject. Jewish prejudice and Jewish 
hate had already manifested themselves in no 
uncertain way. The essential doctrines of 
Christianity were most offensive to all classes, 
Scribes, Pharisees and common people. They 
militated against their sacred beliefs and their 
most cherished expectations. There was noth- 
ing in Judaism, as apprehended by the people 
in the days of the apostles, that prepared the 
way for the ready acceptance of Christianity. 
It called for the repudiation of national tradi- 
tions and hopes, the abandonment of forms of 
worship, which were hallowed by the use of 
centuries, and the acceptance of a crucified 
malefactor as their foretold Messiah, instead 
of coming into possession of a restored king- 
dom, presided over by a mighty Prince, glorious 
in his person and glorious in his reign. **To 
the Jews a stumbling-block." 

To say that in Judaism there were forces at 
work which naturally evolved into spiritual 
Christianity without a special divine interposi- 
tion and a new revelation of supernatural power 
and grace, is to say what no reasonable student 



The TRIUMPHS of CHRISTIANITY 199 

of the condition of things can justify. Judaism 
resisted and fought the entrance and progress 
of Christianity by every means in its power, by 
the persistent persecution and slaughter of its 
followers. ^'Christ came to his own, and his 
own received him not." They treated the dis- 
ciple as they did the Master, as he prophesied 
they would. Again and again, the first apos- 
tolic appeal was made to the Jews, only to be 
repulsed, and the apostles turned to the Gen- 
tiles, hoping to find an open ear and a respon- 
sive heart. Moreover, the spirit of intense 
hatred and blind fanaticism of the whole Jewish 
people has survived for nineteen centuries, and 
lives to-day, notwithstanding the attempt of a 
Jewish Rabbi here and there to exonerate his 
ancestors from the crime of crucifying the Son 
of God, and to lay the responsibility upon the 
Roman Government. "To the Jews [still] a 
stumbling-block." 

And *'to the Greeks foolishness." Greek 
culture and philosophy, the fickleness of mind, 
which was characteristic of the nation, its ab- 
sorbing worldiness and gaiety, its love and pas- 
sion for art, and physical as over against moral 
beauty, these were as great barriers to the prog- 



200 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

ress of Christianity as Jewish hate and prej- 
udice. Among the Greeks, as Frederick W. 
Robertson has said: "ReHgion degenerated 
into the arts. All the immortal powers of man 
were thrown upon the production of a work of 
the imagination. The artist who had achieved 
a beautiful statue was almost worshipped. The 
poet who had produced a noble poem was the 
prophet of the nation. The man who gave 
the richest strains of melody was half divine. 
The arts became religion, and religion ended 
in the arts." 

Paul found classic Athens wholly given to 
idolatry. It was a proverb that the city con- 
tained as many idol statues as men. A prin- 
cipal value of their belief in the gods was the 
opportunity it furnished for the display of their 
artistic taste and skill. Every new god must 
have a new altar, and so they erected one to 
*'the unknown god," when they had exhausted 
the list of their known deities. For once agnos- 
ticism produced something. But amid it all, 
life was superficial, frivolous, sensual, without 
seriousness, without moral purpose, without 
faith in the great spiritual realities of this life 
or of the next. When Paul, the earnestness 



The TRIUMPHS of CHRISTIANITY 201 

and nobility of whose spirit were in striking 
contrast with their frivolousness and sensual- 
ity, preached to them the doctrine of the resur- 
rection, it is significantly said that they simply 
"mocked." 

The most difficult people to-day to reach with 
the saving truths of the Gospel of Christ are 
those who are flippant and frivolous, whose 
lives are shallow and superficial, who make 
light of all things sacred, who never allow 
themselves to have any serious thoughts, who 
regard themselves with supercilious self-com- 
placency, and devote their lives to the proud 
cultivation of their aesthetic nature and their lit- 
erary tastes, to the neglect of their ethical and 
spiritual nature. These are the Greeks of mod- 
ern society. They are an almost hopeless class, 
and they present now, as of old, an insuperable 
barrier to the progress of the saving Gospel of 
Jesus Christ. 

Then there was the Roman nation, hard, ma- 
terial, made proud and cruel by its bloody con- 
quests, jealous of its idolatrous faiths, and wor- 
shipping every symbol and personation of 
power, so that even its emperors were gods to 
be worshipped, whose supreme glory was found 



202 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

in the captives dragged at their chariot wheels, 
and whose supreme pleasure was found in the 
heartrending spectacles of the bloody arena; a 
nation which, like Greece, was sunk in the 
dense darkness of heathenism, and in which 
every namable vice and immorality found un- 
blushing indulgence, being sanctioned by the 
highest classes and supposed to be practised 
even by their gods themselves. Every evil pas- 
sion had its deity, and the history of Roman 
life, private and public, is a record of moral 
rottenness, corruption, cruelty and insecurity, 
which has exhausted the power of language to 
describe. The few gleams of light reflecting 
domestic virtue and nobleness of character, 
shown in personal incident, or in mortuary in- 
scription, only make the moral darkness more 
visible and appalling. Matthew Arnold is 
guilty of no poetic exaggeration in the lines : 

"On that hard Pagan world disgust 

And secret loathing fell: 
Deep weariness and sated lust 

Made human life a hell. 

In his cool hall, with haggard eyes, 

The Roman noble lay; 
He drove abroad, in furious guise, 

Along the Appian Way; 



The TRIUMPHS of CHRISTIANITY 203 

He made a feast, drank fierce and fast, 
And crowned his hair with flowers — 

No easier nor no quicker pass'd 
The impracticable hours." 

And Gibbon has truly said : "Every virtue and 
every vice acquired its deity, . . . the freedom 
of the city was bestowed on all the gods of 
mankind, . . . almost every reign is closed 
with the same disgusting repetition of treason 
and murder." The names of Tiberius, Caligula 
and Nero simply disclose what heights of in- 
humanity and what depths of depravity were 
possible in such a state of society. What else 
could be expected than that the disciples of 
Christ, unresisting men and delicate women, 
would be 

"Butchered to make a Roman holiday." 

All this is but a faint picture of the supersti- 
tions, the hoary religious faiths, the hatreds, 
the cruelties, the immoralities, the rooted vices 
which confonted the little company of Christ's 
disciples as they set out for their world-wide 
conquest. The obstacles were indiscribably 
formidable and disheartening. What made 
their case still more hopeless among the Gentile 



204 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

nations was the fact that they would be re- 
garded as a sect of the Jewish race, who were 
everywhere despised, persecuted, banished or 
slain. Their obstinate refusal to join in the 
heathen worship, their denunciation of the pop- 
ular religion and of all forms of prevailing 
wickedness, and in addition their connection 
with a most obnoxious and hated race exposed 
them at all times to the fury of the populace 
and the unbridled cruelty of the Government. 
The old cry which greeted their Master, "Cru- 
cify him," was now changed to the no less cruel 
and successful shout, "The Christians to the 
lions" ! 

Nevertheless, Christianity made headway 
against all these hostile and destructive forces, 
"against principalities, against powers, against 
the rulers of the darkness of this world, against 
spiritual wickedness in high places," and not 
only made headway against them, but in the 
short space of three centuries it was victor 
over them. It changed largely the whole moral 
and social condition of things, and actually en- 
throned itself in the palace of the Caesars. 

It grappled with Judaism, preserving all 
that was best in its religious faith, and convert- 



The TRIUMPHS of CHRISTIANITY 205 

ing out of it those who had been fierce perse- 
cutors into heroic and self-denying apostles and 
founders of Christian churches. The conver- 
sion of Saul of Tarsus, and his splendid life of 
service and suffering which followed that mi- 
raculous event, establish the reality and the 
divinity of the Christian religion beyond a 
question. Christianity met Greece, and seized 
its finely wrought language, which was the ex- 
pression of its culture and its philosophy, and 
made it the vehicle of its own higher spiritual 
truths to all nations and to the end of time. 
Christianity met Rome, and not only conquered 
its victorious eagles, but made them the heralds 
of its divine Dove to the remotest bounds of the 
empire, transforming its laws, its institutions 
and its customs, and sending a purifying and 
saving leaven into the whole lump of social and 
family life and of civil government. Whereas, 
one of its emperors once inaugurated the per- 
secutions of Christians, and mercilessly saw 
them burn as torch-lights in his palace gardens ; 
in three centuries another presided in state at 
great church councils, and ruled over an em- 
pire which was nominally Christian, and into 
whose organic life the institutions of the Chris- 



2o6 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

tian religion had been vitally and forever in- 
corporated. It had achieved not only the im- 
probable but the impossible. Apparent weak- 
ness had triumphed over invincible strength. 
The royal lad had not only brought the oppos- 
ing giant to the ground with the little stone 
and sling, but he had made him his willing and 
obedient servant. 

What but the mighty power of God, inherent 
in the truth of Christianity and accompanying 
its proclamation, could have overcome such 
tremendous obstacles, and accomplished such 
marvellous results ? It is not too much to say 
that the early and rapid triumphs of the Chris- 
tian religion, and its victories over prejudice, 
hatred, superstition, heathenism and universal 
corruption, can be accounted for only upon the 
supposition that it is from God, that its truth 
constitutes a divine revelation whose proclama- 
tion, in obedience to Christ's commission, was 
attended with the power of his almighty Spirit. 

The progress of Christianity among the bar- 
barous, pagan peoples of central and northern 
Europe, and the introduction of a Christian 
civilization, was a victory hardly less marvel- 
lous and significant than that which has just 



The TRIUMPHS of CHRISTIANITY 207 

been described. It is not necessary to dwell 
upon this new advance in detail. It is enough 
to say in the language of another : "From its 
Syrian cradle the Gospel spread eastward 
through Asia, southward to Africa, and across 
the Hellespont into Europe. In 1054, when 
the great schism between the Roman and east- 
ern churches was finally consummated, Europe 
was virtually a Christian continent." Goths, 
Huns, Franks, Celts, Saxons, Slavs, had all 
been brought under the power of Christian 
truth, through the efforts of devoted mission- 
aries, had abandoned their pagan beliefs, their 
sacrificial rites and their barbarous customs, 
and nominally at least were worshippers of the 
true God and believers in the doctrines of his 
Word, and were showing to a greater or less 
degree the fruits of their new religion. 

It is not forgotten that the union of the 
Christian Church with the temporal power in 
the person of the Emperor Constantine was an 
unspeakable calamity and a serious departure 
from the teachings of its divine Founder, dam- 
aging to its purity, its power and its spiritual 
life. The history of the Christian centuries 
would have been vastly different if the Church 



2o8 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

had sought only the kingship of Christ, and 
employed only spiritual weapons in its warfare 
and spiritual methods in its aggressive move- 
ments. It continued to increase, indeed, in 
numbers and in a certain kind of influence, and 
exercised like power with worldly rulers in the 
councils and intrigues of European nations, but 
it lost its simplicity, its likeness to Jesus Christ, 
its sense of dependence upon the Spirit of God, 
and alas! its moral purity. Great, abominable 
and soul-destroying errors and superstitions 
crept into it, a mixture of Judaism and Pagan- 
ism, and also a love of pomp and display, 
honors and powers. Grievous oppressions were 
multiplied, so that religion came to be a yoke 
too burdensome to be endured by the liberty- 
loving spirit of man; and still further unholy 
rivalries and nameless sins became common and 
notorious among those shepherds who should 
have been examples to the flock. It was true 
of the Church of God that there was "spiritual 
wickedness in high places." 

It is not questioned that there were good 
men in the Roman Catholic Church, who were 
godly and spiritual in spite of dangerous for- 
malism, prevailing error and gross wickedness, 



The TRIUMPHS of CHRISTIANITY 209 

nor that the Church did a valuable service in 
copying and preserving the Sacred Scriptures, 
though it would have done a far more valuable 
service if, instead of keeping the Bible bound 
in chains, it had given it freely to the people 
as their rightful heritage from God, and writ- 
ten its truths not simply on dead parchments, 
but in illuminated letters in the lives of both 
people and priests. Those have been truly 
called "the dark ages" in the history of Chris- 
tian Europe, ages in which the light of the 
glory of God as revealed in Jesus Christ was 
obscured by empty forms, deceitful errors, 
grievous oppressions and shocking indulgen- 
ces. The Church was indeed "in the wild- 
erness," and the fair form of truth was crushed 
to earth, and buried beneath the rubbish of 
multiplied dogmas, for which the Scriptures 
give no warrant, and useless sacraments to 
which saving efhcacy was attached, rather than 
to simple faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. 

But "truth crushed to earth will rise again" ; 
and so it did under the mighty reformations of 
the sixteenth century. There is no' stronger 
evidence of the divinity of the Christian faith 
and the supernatural origin of the Word of 



2IO WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

God than its ability to burst the heavy chains 
which had bound it for centuries, to shake itself 
clear from superstitions and errors which had 
fastened themselves upon it, and apparently in- 
corporated themselves into it, and to reassert 
itself in its purity, simplicity and spiritual 
power. If men shall ever again overburden the 
Christian faith with falsehoods and human in- 
ventions, or shall ever drift away from the es- 
sential truths of revelation, as some men and 
churches seem to be doing to-day, it has in it 
the power of a divine recovery. God will see 
to it that there is a new reformation, when the 
faiths of men will be called back to the simple, 
unencumbered and unadulterated truth of the 
Word of God. 

It should be said in this connection, what is 
too often forgotten, that the reformation of the 
sixteenth century was an incalculable blessing 
to the Roman Catholic Church, and saved it 
by its reforming influence, penetrating within 
the Church, from a complete and absolute re- 
pudiation by the advancing intelligence of Eu- 
ropean nations. It could not wholly escape the 
mighty, far-reaching influence of the Renais- 
sance. It can never again be as it was before. 



The TRIUMPHS of CHRISTIANITY 211 

so sunk in error and corruption, and so regard- 
less of the rights of conscience and the claims 
of personal freedom and intelligent manhood. 
Especially in lands where Protestantism has 
made its beneficent influence widely felt, Rom- 
anism is compelled wisely to adapt itself to the 
changed conditions of fuller light and liberty 
and unfettered thought. 

For two centuries after the Reformation the 
history of Christianity was not marked by wide 
aggressive movements. Here and there ad- 
vances were attempted, which were the fore- 
runners of modern missions, but Protestant 
Christendom was largely occupied iQ working 
out to their legitimate conclusions the religious 
forces and principles which gave it birth. It 
may be said that the most logical result of the 
Reformation was the settlement of America, 
and the founding in this new world of a Re- 
public, based upon the principles of civil and 
religious liberty. This free Republic is the 
maturest and divinest offspring of the Pro- 
testant Reformation, and the ripest fruit of the 
spiritual seed contained in the Word of God, 
and may be said to be an indisputable evidence 
of the divine origin of that religious faith which 



212 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

impelled and guided its founders. This loftiest 
conception of human life and government upon 
earth, which is the product of New Testament 
teaching, viz. : a free Church, endowed with 
spiritual life in a free State, built upon human 
brotherhood and the rights of the individual 
conscience, bears upon it the stamp of its divine 
paternity. 

During the last century, however, Christian- 
ity has been making wonderful strides, and has 
achieved results which bear fresh and unmis- 
takable testimony to its character and power. 
This has been pre-eminently the century of mis- 
sionary effort, and the progress of Christian- 
ity has far exceeded the progress in the cen- 
turies immediately subsequent to the days of 
the Apostles. At the end of the first century 
of the Christian era, it is estimated by Pro- 
fessor Shem and other careful statisticians that 
there were 500,000 Christians. At the end of 
the fifth century the figures had advanced to 
15,000,000. At the end of the fifteenth cen- 
tury, after ten centuries more had elapsed, or 
at the time of the Reformation, there were 
100,000,000. From the fifteenth to the eigh- 
teenth century the number was doubled, mak- 



The TRIUMPHS of CHRISTIANITY 213 

ing 200,000,000. But during the single cen- 
tury which has just closed, it is calculated that 
300,000,000 have been added to the number of 
Christians, making the present number 500,- 
000,000. In other words, in this remarkable 
century the number of Christians has increased 
two and a half fold. Three times as many have 
been added as during the previous three cen- 
turies, more than twenty times as many as dur- 
ing the first five centuries, and six hundred 
times as many as during the first century of the 
Christian era. Of course, these figures include 
nominal as well as real Christians. 

At the beginning of the nineteenth century 
the great continents of Asia and Africa were 
almost entirely closed against Christianity. 
Now the whole world, with its 1,500,000,000 
inhabitants, is practically open to the entrance 
of the Gospel, with the single exception of the 
country of Thibet. China, Japan, India and 
Africa are being traversed by the feet of Chris- 
tian missionaries, and their vast territories are 
being dotted with churches of Jesus Christ and 
with Christian schools, while the great centers 
of population are being taken possession of by 
the followers of our Lord, and supplied with 



214 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

Colleges and Theological Seminaries for the 
higher education of the on-coming generation 
and the training of a native ministry. Chris- 
tian thought has been diffusing itself through- 
out heathen lands, changing ancient and sacred 
customs, and so transforming social conditions 
that intelligent Indians have been led to confess 
that it is no longer Buddha who rules in India, 
but Jesus Christ. 

Some of the islands of the sea have been 
practically evangelized, notably the Hawaiian 
group, from which foreign missionary effort 
has been withdrawn, and the people have been 
left to complete the work of Christianization 
with their own agencies and resources. The 
inhabitants of other islands have been con- 
verted from the most degraded barbarism and 
cannibalism to civilized and peaceable popula- 
tions, among whom Christian morality and 
charity prevail, and Christian institutions are 
observed as generally as in the oldest Christian 
communities. Two-thirds of the territory of 
Africa are now under the control of Christian 
governments, and not far from 900,000,000 of 
the inhabitants of the globe, or nearly sixty- 
seven per cent, of the earth's population, have 



The TRIUMPHS of CHRISTIANITY 215 

been brought under the sway of Christian na- 
tions. 

It should be added that the Holy Scriptures 
of our faith, which have furnished the motive 
and the command for this immense work of 
evangelization and moral enlightenment, have 
now been translated, entirely or in part, into 
more than four hundred languages and dialects, 
so that almost every people and tribe on the 
face of the whole earth can now hear the Gospel 
of peace and eternal salvation in their own 
tongue wherein they were born. This is but 
the barest outline of the marvellous progress 
of Christianity, which bears abundant witness 
to its victorious power over apparently insur- 
mountable obstacles, and its ability in the hands 
of obedient and devoted adherents to push on 
its conquests to complete victory, until the 
great prophetic declarations, which are an in- 
herent and inseparable part of itself, shall be 
fulfilled, and "the kingdoms of this world shall 
become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his 
Christ," and he shall reign "King of kings and 
Lord of lords forever and ever." 

But it is not the extent of the progress or 
the number of nominal adherents to Christian- 



2i6 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

it}^ that constitutes the peculiar and striking 
evidence of its divine origin and the super- 
human character of its message, but it is the 
nature of the progress which it has made, as 
seen in the condition of the peoples and the 
lands which it has most completely conquered 
to itself. We do not forget that Buddhism can 
reckon its adherents by hundreds of millions, 
as well as Christianity, and that Mohammedan- 
ism still holds dominion over vast populations 
in Europe, and Asia and Africa who have been 
conquered by its sword. Mere numbers of fol- 
lowers are not conclusive evidence of the divin- 
ity of a religious system. The Koran and the 
Vedas are not proved to be from God by the 
multitudes of cruel and immoral followers who 
worship in the mosques of the one, or the mul- 
titudes of ignorant and degraded devotees who 
bow in the pagodas of the other. A religious 
system must be tested by its moral and spiritual 
teachings, by the quality of the fruits which it 
produces, by the character of the conquests 
which it makes. 

Judged by these tests, Christianity stands 
conspicuous and alone as a religious system 
worthy to have come from God, giving evi- 



The TRIUMPHS of CHRISTIANITY 217 

dence of the inspiration and activity of the 
Holy Spirit in its unfolding, and yielding fruits 
which have upon them the impress of the Di- 
vine ; which are not the natural fruits of a uni- 
versally degenerate nature but the fruits of a 
regenerating Spirit ; not the fruits of an evolu- 
tionary process, but the fruits of a divine inter- 
position and an imparted new life. 

Only the briefest presentation can be given 
of this supremely important subject as bearing 
upon the supernatural character of the Chris- 
tian revelation. The influence of the Bible, 
when it has been received as the Word of God, 
has been manifested in the regenerated lives of 
men, in their purified and refined^ homes, in 
their improved social conditions ; in a word, in 
the advanced civilization which we are wont 
to denominate Christian. Men sometimes talk 
thoughtlessly about the effects of our modern 
civilization, as if to it could be ascribed the 
light, the progress, the superior advantages of 
our time. But civilization never produced any- 
thing, and never can produce anything. It is 
itself a product, and not an originating force, 
an effect and not a cause. It is but the aggre- 
gation of the results of forces which have been 



2 1 8 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

at work in human society. The primary, the 
transcendent force which has been working to 
produce the advanced civiHzation, of which we 
boast, in nominally Christian nations, has been 
the religion of Jesus Christ embodied in the 
Word of God. That is the reason why it is 
spoken of significantly as a Christian civiliza- 
tion. It is because Christianity has given birth 
to it, and has in some recognized degree 
moulded and guided it by the inculcation and 
infusion of Christian principles and motives. 
That which has produced the almost measure- 
less difference between life in America and life 
in Africa, between life in England and life in 
China, has been the dynamic power of the 
Bible, with its inspired doctrines of God and 
righteousness, of life and duty, of faith and 
immortality, and with its historic Christ, au- 
thoritative teacher, perfect example and Al- 
mighty Saviour, in whom the revelation of the 
Bible culminated. It is this that has made it 
possible to say : 

''Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of 
Cathay." 

Mr.' W. T. Stead has truly said: "The 
triumph of Christianity is indeed a great mir- 



The TRIUMPHS of CHRISTIANITY 219 

acle, even if the whole of the Gospel story be 
accepted as Gospel truth ; but if there be noth- 
ing behind it excepting chance, or *the play of 
purely casual circumstance/ then, indeed, we 
are face to face with a still more marvellous 
miracle than anything which staggers the faith 
in the Scripture record." 

It need not be claimed that everything that 
distinguishes Christian lands can be traced di- 
rectly to the influence of the Word of God, and 
the activity of believers in Christ, that there 
have not been other forces and agencies at work 
which have helped on the progress and brought 
it to its present high stage of development. But 
it must be admitted by every thoughtful mind 
that the Bible, and its sublime ethical and spir- 
itual truths, have put their impress upon the 
best life of to-day, and more than anything 
else, ay, vastly more than all things else, have 
made it what it is. In spite of all the defects 
and corruption of nominally Christian society, 
of the institutions and practices and conditions 
of modern Christendom, and in spite of all the 
imperfections and failures in Christian char- 
acter and life, there is enough that is worthy 
and superior, commendable and Christ-like, 



220 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

distinguishing us from unchristian communi- 
ties and indicative of great and permanent 
progress, to exalt the influence of Christianity, 
and to crown with unspeakable glory the re- 
ligious teaching of the Bible. Indeed, to the 
glory of the Sacred Scriptures be it said that 
the sins, defects and failures of our so-called 
Christian civilization are never ascribed, by the 
most thoughtless and malicious, to Christian- 
ity, but rather to a depravity of nature not yet 
overcome by Christian teaching, and to social 
conditions not yet brought completely under 
the sway of the religion of Christ. By univer- 
sal consent, when men and society and human 
government, when life in all its relations, shall 
be under the supreme control of the truth of 
Revelation, then all things that mar the beauty 
of our present condition, destroy its peace and 
its purity, and hinder its perfection, will com- 
pletely and forever disappear. 

The progress of Christianity which bears 
witness to its divine origin and power may be 
said to lie in three parallel and coexistent lines. 

First, the general enlightenment of the peo- 
ple. Christian nations have been distinguished, 
and by Christian nations is nteant nations 



The TRIUMPHS of CHRISTIANITY 221 

whose conception of Christianity has been 
taken from an open Bible, and has been spirit- 
ual and correct, by the general diffusion of 
knowledge and the rapid multiplication of in- 
stitutions of learning. It is true in every sense, 
to use the words of the Psalmist, that "the en- 
trance of thy words giveth light." A love for 
all truth, a broader intelligence, a more exalted 
mental life, the prevalence of educational ad- 
vantages have accompanied the acceptance of 
the Bible as the Book of religious faith among 
the people. The arts, the sciences and all good 
learning have flourished in Christian lands ; in- 
deed, they have existed nowhere else. The re- 
ligion of Christ uniformly kindles*, to a glow 
the intellectual life of communities, and igno- 
rance and superstitition flee like bats from its 
brightness. The sad condition of Italy, Spain, 
Ireland and Mexico, and the general illiteracy 
and degradation of the people in those coun- 
tries, only emphasize the fact that it is the su- 
premacy of the Book that gives enlightenment, 
and not the supremacy of the Church, however 
mighty its influence and ornate its service, 
which chains the Book and withholds it from 
the people. 



222 WHY z£;^ BELIEVE ^/^^ BIBLE 

Secondly, the progress is seen in the higher 
moral tone in Christian communities. Much 
as we deplore the ethical shortcomings of our 
time in individual and social life, in political 
and commercial life, the life of to-day is lived 
on a higher moral plane than ever before, and 
is in striking contrast with the low life of com- 
munities where the Gospel of Christ has never 
penetrated with purifying and elevating power. 
Under the lofty Christian standards, the per- 
fect moral ideals of the Bible, if sin is commit- 
ted, if crime is perpetrated, if immorality and 
corruption exist, it arouses universal moral 
condemnation. If a man is guilty of an offence 
against the purity of the home and the sanctity 
of the marriage tie, the whole nation rises in 
indignant protest against his wearing civil 
honors or having aught to do with the admin- 
istration of public affairs. The question is not, 
does sin exist in Christian communities, for 
human nature is weak and far from being sanc- 
tified, and there are still masses of the social 
lump that are not permeated by the moral 
leaven; but how is it treated when it is discov- 
ered ? Is it defended and condoned, or is it re- 
buked and condemned ? This is the test of the 



The TRIUMPHS of CHRISTIANITY 223 

moral sentiment of a community, and shows 
whether its standards are heaven-born or earth- 
born. Under the teachings of the Bible the 
moral tone of society has steadily advanced, 
and the demands for personal and civic right- 
eousness are becoming more and more impera- 
tive. 

And thirdly, the progress of society under 
the influence of revealed religion is manifest 
in the marvellous development of charity and 
active philanthropy. If there is one thing above 
all others that distinguishes our Christian civ- 
ilization, it is its system of organized help and 
relief for the needy and the unfortunate, which 
is fast approaching completeness. ••^ Hospitals, 
asylums for the aged, the blind, the orphaned, 
the destitute, the insane, the wayward, and 
those who are worse than homeless, these holy 
charities which are now so numerous and cover 
every form of human need and misery, but of 
which there were no traces in non-Christian 
countries, are the fruit of a religion created by 
the Bible, ay, more, are the jewels in its 
diadem, jewels found not in earthly mines, but 
in heaven, of whose love and sympathy and re- 
splendent brightness they all partake. 



224 WHY we BELIEVE the BIBLE 

In respect to such results of the acceptance 
of the Bible as the Word of God, viz. : the 
growing enlightenment of the people, the 
higher standards of personal and social life, 
and the systematic and expensive works of 
charity and love, Dr. Richard S. Storrs has well 
said : "If we find such, on a large scale, going 
everywhere with Christianity, continuing 
through the centuries, and giving promise of 
nobler eras yet to come, I think you will agree 
that it is not rash to ascribe such effects, with 
the system which brings them, to a Mind 
above man's, and to a Will working for our 
welfare." 



INDEX 

OF AUTHORS AND SUBJECTS 

Alford, Dean, Translation of 2 Pet. i : 21, 89. 
Amiel's Journal, quoted, 163. 
Apostolic Fathers, referred to, 82. 

Archaeology, a recent study, 14; does not touch the. 
question of inspiration, 28; extent of its "finds," 

32, 27; they confirm traditional faith, 25-27, 33, 34, 
37, 38, 55, 58; contemporary with O. T. literature, 

33. 34. 

Argyle, Duke of, referred to, 51. 

Arnold, Matthew, quoted, 118, 125, 126, 202. 

Athanasius, referred to, 82. 

Augustine, referred to, 82. 

Ball, C. J., quoted, 28. 

Bauer, referred to, 65. 

Bible, its supreme importance, 5 ; proper treatment of, 
6; new defences, 7; the spirit and letter insepara- 
ble, 9; a new book, 25, 28, 29; its purpose, 92-94; 
the human element, 92 ; its unity, 100 ; its doctrine 
of God, 103; its revelation of Christ, 107; its pro- 
phetic content, 112; and its ethical teachings, 116. 

Boussard discovered Rosetta stone, 34. 

Browning, Robert, quoted, 154. 

Brugsch, Emil, discoveries of, 36. 

Butler, Bishop, referred to, 154. 

Calmet, referred to, 57. 



226 INDEX of AUTHORS and SUBJECTS 

Cave, Alfred, on the early chapters of Genesis, 53. 
Celsus, the great opponent of Christianity, answered by 

Origen, 83-85. 
Chadwick, John W., reference to his life of Theodore 

Parker, 130. 
Channing, William E., quoted, no. 
Christianity, a historical religion, 61 ; distinguishing 

characteristic, 62; early and rapid growth, y2, 75, 

78, 79, 204-206. 
Clement of Alexandria, referred to, 82. 
Coleridge, quoted, 179. 
Comparative religion, its testimony to the Bible, 105- 

107. 
Cornill, referred to, 17. 
Creation tablets^, 47. 
Cyprian, referred to, 82. 
Cyril, referred to, 82. 

Dana, Professor, quoted, 99. 

Dawson, Principal, referred to, 51 ; quoted, 94. 

Deir-el-Bahari, discoveries at, 35. 

Dillman, referred to, 17. 

Dionysius, referred to, 82. 

Doddridge, quoted, 84. 

Elder, Prof. William, quoted, 142-144, 147. 

Eusebius, referred to, 82. 

Evetts, Basil T. A., quoted, 30, 31, 54. 

Experience, the best evidence, 164; open to all, 167; in- 
vincible, 168; primary, 169; conspicuous cases 171; 
every conversion a miracle, 172-175; a homogeneous 
part of a supernatural system, 177; confirms the 
Biblical picture of human nature, 17^; proves the 



INDEX of AUTHORS and SUBJECTS 227 

adaptation of Biblical truth to human needs, 180; 
the impartation of life, 181 ; its method of salva- 
tion, 182 ; its offer of a living Christ, 185 ; its as- 
surance of immortality, 188; necessary to successful 
preaching, 191, and to the continued sovereignty 
of the Bible, 192. 

Farrar, F. W., definition of miracle, 141. 
Fisher, George P., quoted, 140, 141, 142, 146. 
Franklin, Benjamin, quoted, 118. 

Genesis, dissected, 22; fourteenth chapter of, historical, 
42, 43 ; compared with creation tablets, 48-55 ; its 
ethnology, 95 ; Its order of creation, 95 ; a remark- 
able literary phenomenon, 97; its only explanation, 
98, 99. 

Gibbon, on the growth of Christianity, 79; on the moral 
condition of Rome, 203. 

Gladstone, quoted, 54, 94. 

Goethe, quoted, 86. 

Gordon, A. J., quoted, 173. 

Gregory, referred to, 82. 

Gregory of Neo- Csesarea, referred to, 82. 

Griffith- Jones, E., quoted, 148. 

Hadrian's rescript to Minuclus Fundanus, jy. 

Hall, Robert, quoted, 154. 

Hebrew language Imperfectly known, 21. 

Herder, quoted, iii. 

Hilary, referred to, 82. 

Historic Criticism, its origin, 14; Its method, 15; its 
assertions, 16; influenced by opposition to the su- 
pernatural, 17; Its linguistic argument, 21; rash- 



228 INDEX of AUTHORS and SUBJECTS 

ness of, 41; correct principle of, 62,', false use of, 

64; applied to N. T., 65. 
Hittites, Biblical account of, confirmed, 40, 41. 
Hommel, Fritz, quoted, 43. 
Hovey, Alvah, definition of miracle, 141. 
Howorth opposed to mythical theory of the deluge, 51. 
Huxley, referred to, 143, 147. 

Illingworth, J. R., quoted, 150. 

Inspiration of Old Testament, 89; of New Testament, 
90; of the books or of the writers, 91; not revela- 
tion, 91 ; definition, 92. 

Irenaeus, referred to, 82. 

Jerome, referred to, 82. 

Josephus, guilty of intentional silence, 68 ; yet unwill- 
ing witness, 68-71. 
Justin Martyr, referred to, 82. 

Klein, Rev. F., discoverer of Moabite stone, 44. 
Kuenen, referred to, 17. 

Lactantius, referred to, 82. 

Lamb, Charles, quoted, iii. 

Lecky, Wm. E. H., quoted, 137. 

Lenormant opposed to mythical theory of the deluge, 51. 

Lucan's Pharsalia, referred to, 74. 

Mansel, H. L., definition of miracle, 141. 
Margoliouth, Professor, quoted, 120. 
Maspero, Professor, discoveries of, 35. 
McCosh, President, definition of miracle, 141. 
McCurdy, J. T., quoted, 27. 



INDEX of AUTHORS and SUBJECTS 229 

Melchizedeck, a historic character, 42. 

Mill, John Stuart, quoted, 119, 146. 

Miracles, denial of, 125-130; four ways of treating 
them, 132-136; cannot be ignored, 137; Christian 
distinguished from spurious, 138, 145 ; not a viola- 
tion of natural law, 139-144; what denial of, in- 
volves, 144; incontrovertible evidence needed, 145; 
Hume's argument answered, 145 ; Christ, the su- 
preme miracle, 148; makes other miracles probable, 
149; all part of one system, 150; the purpose 
worthy, 152; three periods, 150; no need of them 
now, 156; object and effect, 157-160. 

Moabite stone, 44-47. 

Moses, age of, not illiterate, 18, 39; could have written 
Pentateuch, 19 ; believed to have done so, 62. 

Mozley, J. B., quoted, 138. 

Murphy, J. G., quoted, 105. 

Neander, referred to, 174. 

Neibuhr, quoted, 66. 

New Testament, historical, 61-64 ; assailed, 65 ; date 
and genuineness confirmed, 67 ; quoted by early 
writers, friendly and hostile, 80-83, all treat it as 
authentic history, 83 ; if lost, could be restored 
from quotations, 83; no time for growth of myths 
and legends, 83 ; it created Christendom, 81. 

Old Testament, historical, 13; endorsed by Christ, 16, 
23; accepted by the Jews, 23; confirmed by monu- 
ments, 24-28, 34-58. 

Origen, referred to, 8, 82-83. 

Osgood, Howard, quoted, 18. 

Papias, referred to, 82. 



230 INDEX of AUTHORS and SUBJECTS 

Pascal, quoted, i6o. 

Paul us, referred to, 65. 

Pentateuch, pronounced untrustworthy, 18; Mosaic au- 
thorship denied, 18; affirmed, 19, 20, 2)7, 53» 55. 
58, 62. 

Pinches, discoveries of, 42. 

Pliny's account of early Christians, 7^-77- 

Porphyry's books against the Christians, referred to, 74. 

Price, Ira M., quoted, 29, 43. 

Progress of Christianity, evidence of its origin, 195; in- 
superable obstacles, 196, 197; the Jews, 197; the 
Greeks, 199 ; the Romans, 201 ; its success, proof of 
divinity, 204-206; progress in central and northern 
Europe, 207; damage from union of Church and 
State, 207; the meaning of the Reformation, 209, 
210; America, its ripest fruit, 211; modern mis- 
sions and their results, 212 ; kind of fruit, 216 ; gen- 
eral enlightenment, 220; higher moral tone, 222; 
development of philanthropy, 224. 

Ramsay, Wm. M., quoted, 26. 

Rawlinson, George, quoted, 56, 62, 

Renan, referred to, 39, 65, 80. 

Reuss, referred to, 17. 

Rhees, Rush, quoted, 149. 

Richter, quoted, no. 

Robertson, F. W., quoted, 200. 

Robinson, Ezekiel, quoted, 168, 169, 191, 224. 

Rosetta stone, ^Z- 

Rousseau, quoted, in, 119. 

Rufinus, referred to, 82. 

Sayce, A. H., quoted, 19, 31, 41, 55, 56. 



INDEX of AUTHORS and SUBJECTS 231 

Schliemann, referred to, 26. 

Shakespeare, quoted, 125. 

Shields, Charles W., quoted, 97, 99, 171. 

Silliman, Professor, quoted, 96. 

Smith, Goldwin, quoted, 126, 127, 128, 133, 146. 

Stade, referred to, 17. 

Stanley, A. P., quoted, 6^. 

Stead, W. T., quoted, 218. 

Storrs, Richard S., quoted, 156, 165, 166, 196. 

Strauss, referred to, 65. 

Suetonius, testimony of, 74. 

Tacitus, testimony of, 72, y^- 
Tel-el-Amama tablets, 39. 
Tertullian, referred to, 82. 
Trajan's letter to Pliny, 77. 

Vinet, quoted, 173. 

Vitringa, referred to, 57. ^ 

Walsh, Rev. W. P., quoted, 46, 47. 
Wellhausen. referred to, 17. 
White, Andrew D., quoted, 128. 



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